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Protect Forests and Indigenous Peoples /
Kenya
Letters to the President of Kenya urging him to stop logging and colonization in the
Mau Forest that threaten the survival of the Ogiek people. Requested by ECOTERRA Intl.
( www.ecoterra.org.uk
/ www.ecoterra.net ), the Ogiek Welfare Council
( www.ogiek.org ), the Kenya Forests Working Group
( www.kenyaforests.org ) and Survival International
( www.survival-international.org
).
Victory! 1/15/03
The landslide election of president Mwai Kibaki on December 27,
2002, brings hope for a more democratic, less corrupt, and more
environmentally responsible government in Kenya. Professor Wangari
Maathai, famed leader of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, was named
Vice Minister of the Environment. Logging and private land
allocations in the forests that former president Moi removed from
protected status have been stopped. Global Response letters last
year asked for the forests to be returned to protected status, and
for the land rights of the Ogiek indigenous people to be
recognized. Ogiek Rural Integral Projects director Charles Saina
Sena writes, “We have faith that the Ogiek People will be
given their land and settled by the new government. Thank you very
much to Global Response for always remembering us.”
Kenya: Lights and shadows
in new government's approach to forests
Kenya's new elected president, Mwai Kibaki,
has named Dr Newton Kulundu as Environment Minister and well known
environmentalist Prof Wangari Mathai as assistant minister. The
newly appointed minister has already made a number of public
statements related to forests which seem to imply that things
might be changing --at last-- in the right direction. However, his
statements leave some crucial issues in the shade.
In media interviews, the minister has said
that "irregular allocation of forest land to private
developers in the country will be revoked soon" and that
"disciplinary action will be taken against all Government
officials found to have dished out the forest land to politically
correct individuals." Additionally, he said his Ministry will
liase with the relevant Government departments to have the
allocations nullified and the land reverted back to the state.
All the above is good news. However, the
minister does not go into great depth in the analysis of the
underlying causes of deforestation, and focuses on the (true) fact
that Kenyan forests have been depleted by "selfish
individuals," but leaving aside at least equally important
issues such as land tenure patterns and macroeconomic policies
that also at the root of deforestation and forest degradation.
Environmentalists estimate that British
colonialists and Kenyan farmers cleared about three quarters of
woodlands in the last 150 years, leaving about two percent of
Kenya's land area under forest cover. The fact that behind all
those processes it would be easy to find "selfish individuals"
would be certainly insufficient to understand and address the
results of that historical process of forest destruction, that
continues to the present day. Unless the underlying causes of
forest loss are identified and measures are taken to address them,
focusing on corruption alone will not be the solution to the
problem.
The other major aspect of the new minister's
approach to forests is to increase forest cover. Dr Kulundu's aim
is to increase forest cover to 10% within the next five years, but
he has not provided details about where and how this would be
implemented and on what he means by increasing "forest
cover." Hopefully, it might imply the restoration of native
forests by and for the benefit of local communities or small scale
community-based agroforestry schemes. But it could also mean the
plantation of large-scale alien tree monocultures, which could
impact further on native ecosystems and particularly on the
dwindling water resources already affected by widespread forest
loss.
We sincerely hope that the draft Forest
Management Policy Bill currently being worked out, which the
minister has said will be "aimed at increasing the forest
cover in the country" will take on board what Kenyan
journalist Mutuma Mathiu advised in May 2002 to the then
Conservator of Forests Maj General Peter Ikenye, which ended
saying:
"And what exactly is Gen Ikenye's
mandate? To say that he will be in charge of the conservation
effort would be a contradiction of sorts --there is no
conservation.
The way things are, the job is likely to be
three-fold. The most urgent task is to define the forests. Are the
pieces of forest land which have been criminally degazetted still
part of the forest? Can they be re-gazetted? There is also the job
of determining the final status of squatters, settlers and land
grabbers on forest land. A lot of forest squatters are very poor
families. They can't be tossed out into the streets without a
parachute. Devising that parachute will require lots of money,
hard work, ingenuity and leadership.
Second is the question of protection. Having
defined the forests, there will be need to devise new sustainable
mechanisms to protect them. This will most probably entail some
type of symbiotic friendship between forests and neighbouring
communities.
Finally is the question of restoring those
parts that have been destroyed. There is no point in filling our
country exclusively with exotic trees. I think Environment
minister Joseph Kamotho, having admirably absorbed his political
setbacks, should now lead the nation in establishing nurseries of
indigenous trees and planting them."
In a nutshell.
Article based on information from: "Can
Our Forests Breathe At Last?", Mutuma Mathiu, The Nation
(Nairobi), May 5, 2002, http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=10735
; "Govt to Act On Forest Grabbers , Says Kulundu",
Hilton Otenyo, The East African Standard (Nairobi), January 6,
2003, http://allafrica.com/stories/200301060630.html
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