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Parliament to debate
forest issue
by John Kamau, Rights Features Service
(March 2,
2001) As the Kenya forest saga continues, Democratic Party of
Kenya, the official opposition in parliament, has formally filed
a notice of motion that seeks to compel the government to protect
forests and rivers.
Parliament
is expected to resume this month and the intended excision of
10 per cent of Kenya forests, a huge part being in Mau Forest,
the home of the Ogiek community, will be one of the key debates.
For one week
now, lobbying groups in Nairobi have been urging the minister
to rescind his decision. The GreenBelt Movement, led by Prof.
Wangari Maathai, started a signature collecting exercise to force
the government to back down.
Already,
the renowned environmental activist has handed 2,500 signatures
to Minister for Environment Francis Nyenze.
Maathai says
she hopes to raise more than 300,000 signatures by March 15.
The minister
is still denying any wrongdoing and insists that the "government's
intention has been misinterpreted."
The minister
insists that "no new forests are being excised. "The move aims
to protect the forest from further encroachment," says the minister.
The government
says the aim is to formalize what is on the ground, as the land
had been settled on for about a decade.
The minister's
explanation has been dismissed by Ogiek community leaders who
insist that part of Mau Forest is their ancestral land and that
the degazettement without any plans to protect the community land
would lead to their extinction.
"We want
land, yes, but this is pure politics. They want to settle other
people on our land," says Ogiek spokesman Joseph Towett.
He said that
the community will not exchange their cultural heritage for a
few acres.
Meanwhile,
local nongovernmental organization Operation Firimbi has asked
the government to publish a comprehensive statement on the excision
for the purposes of accountability and transparency.
In a statement,
the organization coordinator, Davinder lamba, said: "The government
must come out clean on accusations that it wants to dish out land
as part of its 2002 election campaign strategy."
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