ESA joins UN climate talks in Kenya   This Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) image, is centered over Kenya, republic in East Africa, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Kenya has a varied landscape of plateaus and high mountains and is home to many different ethnic groups. It is bounded on the north by Sudan and Ethiopia, on the east by Somalia and the Indian Ocean, on the south by Tanzania, and on the west by Lake Victoria and Uganda. Nairobi is the capital and the largest city of the country.   Cars and industrial activity contribute to the 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide released each year into the atmosphere.   Vegetation in general, and trees in particular, work in the same way as chemical 'scrubbers' aboard spacecraft or submarines, to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Accordingly the Kyoto Protocol permits signatory nations to set new forests against emissions. ESA's Kyoto-Inventory service, forerunner to GSE Forest Monitoring, utilises satellite data to assist national annual Kyoto reporting on afforestation, refforestation and deforestation (ARD).   Changes can be seen from land use maps of two different years in the Netherlands; red signifies settlements, light green is grassland and dark green forests. Land use change maps have been produced for 1984-1990 and 1990-2002.   ESA's exhibit at the COP 12 in Nairobi Release date: 3 December 2009