Lake Naivasha is a national resource

On May 5, 2016, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the Nakuru county commissioner to ensure that the owners of large tracts of land around Lake Naivasha open up access corridors to allow hundreds of local people and other Kenyans access to the lake’s beaches and other resources.

However, this has not yet happened. Although rivers, lakes, and parts of the ocean are usually natural resources that belong to countries, and therefore the people, the case of Lake Naivasha seems to be different.

The lake is under the direct control of a group of people who own land around it. The colonial government handed over the lake and the land around it (i.e. riparian land) to the landowners, who operated under the Lake Naivasha Riparian Owners Association that was formed in 1929. It later dropped the word “owners” from the title.

The law states that no individual can own the 30-metre strip around a water body. This does not seem to apply to Lake Naivasha because the landowners around it — the flower farmers, game ranchers, tour companies — have refused to open 18 of the 19 access routes to the public. This has been a bone of contention for many years, with the local residents complaining that they have been locked out of the right to enjoy the lake.

In Not so Rosy: Farm Workers’ Human Right to Water in the Lake Naivasha Basin, Prof Patricia Kameri-Mbote and Edna Odhiambo say: “In securing their land rights, these owners have curtailed access to the lake by other users, specifically those needing water for domestic use such as farm workers living in informal settlements.”

A study conducted by the Kenya Human Rights Commission said there was massive encroachment by commercial companies on the Lake Naivasha riparian land. Some firms have even erected permanent buildings on it. 

The report by the Presidential Commission on Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land (the Ndung’u Land Commission) recorded the complaints of the local community about the lack of access to the lake.

The residents claimed that those who tried to gain access to the lake were charged with trespassing. Farm owners have erected “No Trespassing” signs on riparian land, claiming that the colonial government had allowed them to move their fences into the riparian land when the waters of the lake recede.

The history of the conflict dates back to the 1930s. In 1933, the white settlers with land around the lake were given custody of the riparian land by the colonial government.

A year earlier, they had signed an agreement called “Foreshore Rights of Riparian Owners” with the colonial government that gave them the right to use the riparian land as they deemed fit. It is not clear why this agreement supercedes the law and the directives of Parliament, the government, and even the President to open up the corridors.

The landowners have used the Fisheries Department, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the National Environment Management Authority, and the police, ostensibly for what they term “sustainable” utilisation of Lake Naivasha but in actual fact, curtail the rights of fishermen, petty traders, and boat operators to benefit from the lake.

The government has never considered using the waters of the lake to benefit the local peasants by irrigating the land around Naivasha town, Longonot, Maai Mahiu, and near Suswa town. It appears the government and its agencies are only interested in catering to the interests of the big landowners, who rake in billions from activities such as horticulture/flower farming and tourism.

The conservation fraternity has been roped in and Lake Naivasha has been declared a water body of international importance. Several international NGOs have ben deployed to persuade the peasants living along the Malewa and Gilgil rivers not to engage in activities that might jeopardise the flow of the rivers into the lake.

The landowners have come up with the Lake Naivasha Management Plan, which is described as “…a community-based initiative, spear-headed by the local community and supported by other stakeholders and institutions with common concerns and commitment to the sustainable management and development of the lake ecosystem.”.

In actual fact, the plan is to guard the landowners’ interests. Given that the government and the media have been reluctant to investigate claims of pollution of the lake by flower farms and other concerns, one is tempted to question whether we are truly independent as a country.

Mr Mbaria is an environmental [email protected]