Maasai: Kenya's Major Water Tower under Threat
The Mau forest occupies a central place in the ecological lifeline of the Rift valley in general and the lives of most of the Maasai in particular.
The forest can be said to be the life support system for the Maasai in the
Rift Valley, and is the origin of many rivers that supply water to Narok,
Trans Mara and Kajiado districts.
The rivers include Mara, Siyapei, Enkare Ngusurr, Enkare Ngi'ro, Enkare Narok and Amala as well as a host of tributaries.
The complex covers more than 290,000 hectares and is the largest remaining near-continuous block of indigenous mountain forest in East Africa.
Regarded by environmentalists as Kenya's major water tower, it is about 250km from Nairobi and borders Kericho to the west, Nakuru to the north and Narok to the south.
It comprises seven blocks - South-West Mau, East Mau, Trans Mara, Mau Narok, Maasai Mau, Western Mau and Southern Mau - all of which merge to form the larger Mau complex.
The current evictions from the forest are based on controversial recommendations made by the Ndung'u land report resulting from the presidential commission of inquiry into irregular and illegal allocations since independence.
Lawyer Paul Ndung'u chaired the commission and the report was presented to President Kibaki in June, last year. The natural progression from this point will be to open up a can of worms, as the revocation of title deeds cannot be done outside the judicial system.
The commission sought to get around this by recommending amendments to the Government Land Act, Cap 280, and the registration of the Titles Act, Cap 281. It is through this legislation that the powers to cancel titles are vested in the High Court. The allocation of forest land raised an outcry in 2001 when the Kanu government degazetted huge tracts to reward supporters. In a hurry to allocate the land, the Kanu government never got to degazette the allocations.
It was this that created space for the Narc government, which succeeded Kanu in December 2002, to justify the evictions.
According to the Ndung'u report, there are more than 200,000 "illegal and irregular title deeds."
This raises the spectre of massive revocations and tricky ratifications. Many deeds are in the more recently developed settlement schemes and forest excisions.
The bulk of these titles were issued over the past 12-15 years.
The excision of huge parcels has reduced forest cover in Kenya from 1.7 million hectares to 1.4 million hectares, which is 2.5 per cent of the total land area, but only 1.7 per cent which is a closed canopy.
"According to international standards, a country with less than 10 per cent of its area under closed canopy forest is environmentally unstable. Forest excisions have severely affected the five main water towers of Mt Kenya, the Mau complex, Mt Elgon, Cherangani and the Aberdares," the report adds.
It further notes that the progressive excision of forests and the resultant chaos are in contravention of all environmental agreements and conventions that Kenya has signed.
They include the Convention of Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention of Climate Change and the Ramsar Convention.The evictions are based on the controversial Ndung'u report recommendations
Source: allAfrica
