Total Kenya has consistently launched innovative programmes that have grown into major national events and trends.

Examples include the lightweight "Meko" gas stoves and lamps, the "Auto Express" service system at stations, and the "Total Kenya Motorshow", which has become the largest exhibition of any kind in the region, breaking exhibitor and attendance records every year since its inception.

Now, Total Kenya is staging its most ambitious project ever, the "Total Eco Challenge", which engages every man, woman and child in Kenya in the country's biggest-ever tree-planting initiative.

The programme could literally change Kenya's landscape and profoundly enhance the environment and the economy far into the future. And bigger still, the project can be directly translated to any country especially all Africa.

Kenya's forest cover has been denuded from 10% to just 1.7% of its land area, and trees are being consumed at the rate of 50 millon per year mainly for firewood and charcoal. Even the most strictly protected forests are under increasing pressure from a population which is due to double in the next 20 years.

Total Kenya has invested heavily in both ideas and capacity for alternative energy supply, but national demographics and economics mean there is only one way to avert eco disaster: plant more trees.

The Total Eco Challenge has set a planting target of 100 million trees per year, every year, calls on the public themselves to take direct action, and backs that call with practical help.

Every Total station is becoming a "Tree Centre" for information and seedlings; and Total Kenya is pumping out inspiration and information through television, radio and the national press, on how to collect and propogate seeds, how to plant better and nurture faster tree growth, on the best locations and special qualities of different tree species.

Total Kenya also brings together poor rural communities who have the will and the land but not the money for major tree-planting, and city corporations who have the financial resources but not the manpower. Total's message to a relatively poor population has been on the value of trees, and all action has been aimed at stimulating real market forces that will create independent and sustainable capacities. The response has been emphatic.

Communities and institutions have registered more than 3000 Total Eco Challenge projects, and in the seventh year have planted more than 500 million trees; in town and country, along roadsides, on farms, in school grounds and factory yards, around dams and along rivers, between crops and along fencelines even in the middle of an industrial area and in a desert!

The quantity and variety of tree seedlings being raised by independent nurseries has increased 10-fold. The impact is already physically real and the programme that has run for the last seven years is gaining incremental momentum.

The sixth anniversary of the campaign was marked with a National Tree Gala Night, in November 2009 where the leading projects in each category business, manufacturing, agriculture, universities, schools, churches and other institutions, societies, clubs, community self-help groups and even individuals received prestigious Total Eco Challenge trophies.

Since inception in 2003, the public continues to respond with overwhelming enthusiasm. The stream of project winners from every cadre of society and every corner of Kenya, urge all Kenyans to join in and pledge to expand their own projects and redouble their efforts to plant even more.

There is already a significant shift in public attitudes and personal, community and corporate action, and strong indications that a national tree "culture" could be achieved if Total Kenya can mobilise the funding to maintain the promotional tempo, get more corporates involved in backing projects, and ensure the new belief among poor rural communities that trees are both viable and valuable, is also made possible.

Total Kenya's Eco Challenge not only inspires the spirit and commitment of the Kenyan public, but also will test the willingness of the rest of the rich but "carbon credit needy" world to support the effort and enterprise of the poor.