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Politics clouding up Mau forest
question
November 8, 2007
EA STANDARD
The saga surrounding the eviction and the return of the evictees
back to the Mau forest raises more questions than answers.
Four years ago, the Narc Government evicted the people who had
invaded the Mau forest advancing the credible reason that the
forest was a water-catchment area that needed to be preserved for
environmental reasons and the survival of people downstream. When
the evictions were carried out, both those with genuine title
deeds and those without were kicked out. The Government had then
promised to secure alternative land to resettle the evictees. To
date that problem has never been addressed.
Surprisingly three weeks ago President Kibaki during one of his
campaign tours in the Rift Valley and, ostensibly after being
‘prevailed’ upon by local leaders, directed the Mau forest
evictees be allowed to return. The numbers that are said to have
trooped back to the forest to date are being put at close to
11,000 people.
First, common sense dictates that the huge number of people that
is trooping back to the Mau forest will greatly interfere with the
ecological system thereby ending up in wanton destruction of the
forest.
Secondly, those in the lower stream who depend on the forest for
water together with their livestock — the majority of whom are
pastoralists — will have to kiss goodbye to the precious commodity.
Apart from preservation of the forest, it is because of these
people that the Government carried out the evictions four years
ago in the first place.
The Government ought to have already handled the matter within the
last four years with by ensuring those who had been kicked out of
the forest are accorded alternative land to settle instead of
waiting for the four years to play politics with the forest.
Whereas the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr
David Mwiraria, can do nothing to reverse the directive by his
boss over the matter, environmentalists who view the move as
dangerous to the forest, including Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari
Maathai, should not allow the Government to play politics with the
lives of the people for purposes of elections.
The elections will come and go but the forest will remain. Those
who will suffer are the people as they will not get water as a
result of a problem that the Government had chosen to create. They
should instead raise the red flag now to avert a crisis.
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