Kenya

The World Social Forum met in Nairobi, Kenya from 20 to 25 January. Beyond the opinion that each one of us may have about its achievements, what we would like to highlight is not so much what was said or what was done there but its message that “another world is possible.” .

Kenyan winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, and also Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and Member of Parliament, Wangari Maathai, launched in 1977 the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa.

Everyone now seems to agree that the Earth’s climate is changing as a direct result of human activities and that the social, environmental, political and economic consequences will be catastrophic if nothing is done – and fast – to address the problem.

Ongoing heart-rending stories of starving people in Kenya are highlighting the problem of drought and its causes. Kenya, east Africa's richest nation and a top attraction for tourists who flock to its reserves and parks for safari holidays, is under a severe crisis of poor rains that hits its harvests. The number of people who face starvation is spiralling ever higher: from 2.5 million in December to 4 million now, according to Kenya's minister for emergency operations.

Some 2.000 members of Ogiek Community in Enoosupukia region of Narok District were asked to move from the area under warning that “any person found to be inside the trust land area shall be evicted/arrested". With clashes within Kenya's fractious ruling coalition, the Lands and Housing Minister, cancelled all Title deeds issued in the Mau forest, apparently determined to evict more than 100,000 people living in the forest.

Kenya’s ‘shamba’ or Tongya system has been generally defined as a form of agroforestry, where farmers are encouraged to cultivate primary crops (maize, bananas, beans and cassava) on previously clear cut public forest land on the condition that they replant trees. Since the mid 19th century, Kenya adopted this system to establish tree plantations by means of cheap or totally free labour, in order to meet the demand for timber.

Wangari Maathai and Florence Wambugu have dramatically opposing approaches to tree planting in Kenya. Maathai’s approach is anti-colonialist and empowers the people planting trees. Wambugu’s is neo-colonialist and makes the people planting trees dependent on biotechnology.

Way back in 1994, a group of NGO people –among whom the current WRM coordinator- were invited by the Maasai to visit a forest which they were struggling to save from tourism "development". As a means of providing international support to the struggle, an article was written and widely disseminated in November that year in Third World Network's magazine "Resurgence" (available at http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9412/0140.html).

Pulp and paper production in Kenya is presently dominated by one firm, Pan African Paper Mills (Panpaper), which is a joint venture between the Kenyan Government, the World Bank’s private investment arm International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Orient Paper Mills, part of the Birhla group from India. The pulp mill was established in 1974 and is based in Webuye town, with a population of some 60,000 people, on the banks of the Nzoia River which drains into Lake Victoria.

Among practices that are emerging in the conservation of Kenya’s forests is the participation of communities in forest management. Although the communities are at the moment being involved at a minimal level, many communities living next to forests now want to make decisions and benefit from sustainable use and management of forests. This desire for participation has been fueled by provisions of the soon to be enacted Forest Bill that will replace the current Forest Act, as well as the work of non-governmental organizations such as the Kenya Forests Working Group (KFWG).

While Kenyans celebrate their forty years of independence, the Ogiek remember the forty years of dispossession and institutional marginalisation. They have suffered systematic oppression, suppression and brutality through a policy of assimilation leading to extinction.

Tiomin Kenya Limited, a subsidiary of Tiomin Resources Inc. of Canada, began exploring the mineral sands of Kenyan coast in 1995 in search of titanium. (see WRM Bulletin Nº 38.). Stretching for 402 kilometers, the area is a unique tropical culture with ancient Arabic architecture, coral reefs, and fragile ecosystems.