When Ruth Karanja is planting and nurturing trees with her local conservation group in their central Kenyan village, she's thinking about water.
Her hope is that the trees she looks after under a government project allowing organizations to "adopt" forests for conservation will help protect the local water catchment so she and other farmers in Kiabariki can increase their potato yields.
In recent years, crops in the area have been depleted by unusually hot weather and drought that have left the land parched and dried up the Kitiri river, which cuts through Nyandarua County, in the summer months.
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