Saving Kenya’s Forests

Category: Conservation | Date: Nov 09 2007 | By: admin

It’s an election year in Kenya, and everywhere you look the elections are being discussed. It’s what we have been eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Kenyans are somewhat obsessed with politics – but I hear this is a good thing; other Africans are said to envy the way Kenyans are able to and do participate in election debate.

But what’s that got to do with forests you ask? Well everything actually. First, in past decades forests were used as a tool to woo and reward voters; large areas of forests were lost in this way. Second, forests have not been seen as an important issue and deciding factor during elections and are routinely treated as “Any Other Business”. In a country that has less than 2 percent of its land under forests, whose economy is largely dependent on these same forests (the tourism, agriculture, water and energy sector draw heavily from services offered by forests) and which is steadily losing indigenous forests each year, you would think the situation would be different.

It is not.

Realizing that this trend will continue and needing to take advantage of the election year, civil society organizations and individuals have come together under the Kenya Forests Working Group to run a campaign that will give prominence to forest issues in political circles. The Misitu Pia! Campaign is aimed at promoting awareness of and commitment to critical forest issues in the run-up to the general elections and beyond. The campaign is targeted at key political parties (eleven parties, Kenya has over 300 parties) who are being asked to include six key forest issues in their manifestos. Lately the campaign has focused on the three parties – ODM, ODM-Kenya and Party of National Unity which brings together the other key parties.

The six forest issues being addressed are support for the forest policy and legislation, political will and transparency in running of the newly created Kenya Forest Service (KFS) that takes care of all forests, funding for KFS to carry out its mandate, demarcation of forest boundaries, addressing settlements in forests and action for increased forest cover.

The campaign is receiving positive reaction, with ODM-Kenya already taking the issues into account. We hope to see the same from ODM and PNU.

Oh, one more thing. My name is Liz and I will be blogging alongside Michael. I look forward to your comments. Thank you Dipesh and F.J. Pechir for your comments.