Nairobi homes on wetlands to be demolished

Structures encroaching on Kenya's wetlands, water catchment areas and those near river banks will be demolished to protect the environment, it has been announced.

“All illegal developments on wetlands or riparian reserves in Nairobi and other parts of the country will be demolished,” said the head of public communications at the ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Mulei Muia.

Lands minister James Orengo has in the past said these structures will have to go.

First in the line of fire are over 127,000 people living mainly in slums along the Nairobi River who will have to make way for a Sh12 billion project to rehabilitate the river basin.

The project, according to Environment minister John Michuki, will take three years to complete by which time all structures within 30 metres of rivers that drain into Nairobi River will have been demolished. According to a report by the National Environment Management Authority (Nema), those holding title deeds will be compensated.

The number of people facing displacement could rise sharply when Lands ministry completes an audit of people and institutions in Nairobi encroaching on wetlands. This could include sizeable portions of estates like Zimmerman, which lies between Thika and Kamiti roads and houses well over 200,000 people.

Zimmerman also faces threats from the Ministry of Lands to reclaim wetlands and a decision by the Water Resource Management Authority (Warma) to demolish structures threatening the survival of Athi River.

Warma chief executive officer, Mr Philip Olum, said that Athi River, which is fed by several tributaries of the Nairobi River, including Kamiti, which flows through Zimmerman, has reached unacceptably low levels.

He said enforcement inspectors had been sent to the affected areas to stop any activities threatening water catchment areas, aquifers or wetlands.

Anguish and suffering

If carried out, these demolitions could easily become the biggest and boldest blow against environmental destruction since independence, but also a major source of anguish and suffering.
What is not clear is how people got to buy land in a wetland as such land is government property.

Although the City Council Planning Department says the land in Zimmerman is registered as residential, the officer in charge failed to provide written proof.

By 1989 the whole area had been bought by Tiabo Partnership, a housing company which had 1,300 plot owners. Some went ahead to develop their land and others sold it off or subdivided it.

In a study by two social researchers, Karen Tranker Hansen and Mariken Vaa “Reconsidering informality: Perspectives from the Urban Africa,” the authors tell of a long battle between the Nairobi City Commission and the housing company on the latter’s request to have the land changed from agriculture use to residential use.

What is clear is that the land sellers subdivided the plots long before they had applied for a change of use.

“There are indications that in the early 1980s, the plots had been surveyed by the then Chief Land Surveyor at the Nairobi City Commission but the subdivision plans had never been submitted to the Commission for approval,” the researchers say.

In 1989 lawyers Kaplan and Stratton for NCC wrote to the housing company. “The NCC will not involve themselves with your matters.”

The establishment of Zimmerman as a residential area, says the book, was started illegally in 1972 and with very high political patronage.

Now the government must try to undo this illegality but in a humane way that does not hurt Kenyans.