Communities have central role to play in conserving the Mau

Tree planting exercise at Naisoya, in the Mau Forest, on September 19, 2014. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The fortress model assumes that locals use natural resources in irrational and destructive ways and so cause biodiversity loss.
  • Eclectic approaches towards conservation are witnessed, with communities considered non-essential stakeholders in the conservation matrix.

The Mau Forest complex — the largest closed canopy forest in eastern Africa — is of critical importance to Kenya.

Straddling six counties — Nakuru, Narok, Kericho, Bomet, Nandi and Baringo — the 400,000-hectare complex is one of Kenya’s five main water towers besides the Aberdare Ranges, Mt Elgon, Cherangani Hills and Mt Kenya.

The disagreement between Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga since 2009 was never about the importance of conserving the Mau; it revolves on the place of communities in forest ecosystems.

Theirs is an ideological difference that typifies different conservation models, and an important site for national consensus if the urgency of securing this ecological landscape is to be realised.

PARK RANGERS
The model includes the fortress conservation model, which Kenya has pursued since colonial times and is embodied in our forestry laws and policies, and the participatory one, common to pre-colonial Africa and retained by several countries on the continent.

While the participatory model allows communities to provide stewardship over common pool resources, the fortress one seeks to create, secure and reserve wide swathes of wildernesses exclusively for flora and fauna and frowns on human and communities’ interaction with such spaces.

The fortress model assumes that locals use natural resources in irrational and destructive ways and so cause biodiversity loss, including environmental degradation.

Using fines and fences to keep out communities and deploying park rangers to police conservation areas, it enforces an extremely bureaucratic framework.

LICENCE
Responsible for carving out large areas of land as protected areas, it also allows licensing of logging by forestry authorities.

But this does not necessarily protect the forests as the logging frenzy over the years, with individuals and companies with no stake in forest stewardship benefiting, shows.

Residents’ interaction with their forests is criminalised while other licensees benefit economically.

As a result, local communities become hostile to it. Without adequate capacity to control large areas and with the absence of local community support, thanks to their alienation, the State is unable to guarantee forest sustainability.

EVICTION
Therefore, while Odinga — perhaps from a well-intentioned perspective of the fortress model — in seeking to enforce the findings of the Mau Task Force Report had no difficulty in directing the forced removal of communities from the Mau, Ruto came to their defence.

Although Odinga saw such eviction as precedent to the realisation of the worthy goal of conservation, Ruto saw communities as integral partners in the effort and their eviction as counter-productive.

The DP hence sought the recognition of titles issued by previous governments to communities on the peripheries of the Mau as an important strategy towards its conservation.

In his view, any eviction not preceded by adequate compensation or relocation to land of equal value would propagate communal hostility towards the forest and, consequently, undermine long-term goals of conservation.

CONSERVE
Unfortunately, since the differing of contestations take place within charged political contexts, no coherent policy on the matter has emerged.

Eclectic approaches towards conservation are witnessed, with communities considered non-essential stakeholders in the conservation matrix.

It is no longer feasible for Kenyans to take for granted that current conservation models will hold our natural resources safe.

The recognition that some of the reserved forest fortresses are nothing but ‘paper parks’ whose resources have been pillaged and plundered through dubious licensing is necessary.

Kenya, therefore, needs a policy and pragmatic rethink, not engaging in blame game.

Dr Sing’Oei is a legal advisor, Office of the Deputy President. [email protected]