NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Eleven environmental organisations from across the world have called on the Finnish government to suspend a €9.5 million fund to the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) because of escalating human rights abuses of the country’s indigenous Sengwer people.
In a joint letter addressed to the President of the Republic Mr. Sauli Niinistö, with copy to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister of Foreign Trade and Development, the organisations, most of them international NGOs noted that KFS bases its approach to forest conservation on evicting forest communities from their ancestral lands. “These are the very communities who have the knowledge and commitment to protect their forests,” reads part of the letter.
The letter was handed to the Finnish government on 24th January 2016 - the day the Sengwer community members of Embobut Forest gathered for the funeral of Robert Kirotich, a 41-year-old man who was allegedly shot dead by a KFS solder on 16th January while out herding cattle on the Sengwer’s ancestral land.
So far, the European Union has already suspended the funding of a €31 million project to the Kenyan government and KFS in response to such killings. A delegation from the EU is planning to conduct a site visit, with Amnesty International and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).
The Finnish Government has been the main supporter of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) over many years, and the organisations feel that it too shares significant responsibility for funding what they refer to as human rights abuses.
In a statement, Justin Kenrick, a senior policy advisor at Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) pointed out that the Finnish government has been a major funder of KFS over many years, and that it needs to learn from KFS's history of illegally logging the forests they are supposed to protect.
“Conservation science is clear that securing the collective land rights of such indigenous forest communities, communities who have cared for their lands for centuries, is the surest way of securing such forests and the flow of water from them to Kenya,” said Kenrick.
“The Finnish government should (instead) support forest indigenous communities to secure their constitutionally recognised land rights, rather than fund KFS which violently evicts them," he added.
On January 22, the Eldoret High Court in Kenya issued a court order stopping the police from evicting members of the Sengwer community from the Embobut Forest. However, according to the environment conservation organisations, a community member Mr Yator Kiptum had reported of continued evictions with KFS guards allegedly burning down more Sengwer homes in Kapkok glade, Embobut forest.
Another Sengwer community member Milka Chepkorir Kuto told delegates at the Investing in Human Rights Defenders event in Brussels that human rights abuses have been ongoing for decades, though it was now intensifying.
She said: “Today Kirotich, one of my own community members, is being buried. He leaves behind a family that looked up to him. He was killed by KFS in Embobut forest during their violent forceful evictions. KFS officers are committing massive human rights violations. Any funding and any organisation or person willing to fund KFS is funding violations directly or indirectly.”
The eleven environmental organisations petitioning the Finish government include the FPP, the IP Hub Africa, EU based FERN, the BIC, the ICCA Consortium, Both ENDS, Natural Justice, iied, Life Mosaic, Maan Ystavat, and Rainforest Foundation UK.
KWALE, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Balozi Dena may have felt helpless in stopping land encroachment that has stalked poor villages in coastal Kenya for the last 68 years of his life. But he is keen on leaving a legacy: protection of indigenous plants.
The elder from Ukunda village in Kwale, has been working with community conservation groups like Coastal Forest Conservation Unit (CFCU) to prevent the destruction of Kaya forests. He is not sure if he is winning.
“It is difficult,” says the father of six. “Most parts of the forests have already been grabbed. Attempting to remove the occupants can sometimes lead to bloodshed.”
During his youth, the Kaya forests - which were thick belts of lowland woodland - surrounded villages and were believed to be sacred by the Mijikenda community.
Cutting trees for timber, grazing of livestock and clearing of farmland were strictly prohibited, he says.
“The forests were places where individuals facing problems in their daily lives could go and seek help by praying there,” he says.
They had another purpose, which is keeping him vigilant lately: medicinal plants.
Studies show that Kenya’s coastal province is endowed with more than half of known rare tree species and shrubs in the country.
But their sacred and medicinal value may remain etched in the memories of a gone generation, if the continued encroachment for property development is not stopped.
“It is the tourism obsession,” argues Dena. “Permanent buildings now stand where forests once flourished.”
That may appear so to Dena.
But a status report on Kenyan forests by the 2016 Kenya Water Towers Agency report lists charcoal burning, logging and illegal harvesting of unique plant species as some of the leading threats facing the country’s ecosystem.
For instance, by the time the report was being released, Kenya had less than 3.5 per cent of gazetted forest.
In 1990, there were 4,670,866 hectares of forest cover while in 2000, the figure reduced to 3,492,358 hectares.
“This destruction of forests can be blamed on the failure by the government to separate community land from public land,” argues Mohamed Swazuri, chairman of Kenya’s National Land Commission.
The price for such anomaly is high: loss of indigenous knowledge stored by rare plants, according to Kamau Ngugi, the executive director, National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders.
“The government should learn how to tap traditional knowledge held by communities living around forests in order to conserve our plant genetic wealth,” says Kamau. “That is a very critical knowledge that we are losing as a society.”
Dena seems to agree. And if his bet is right this time, he just might be getting there.
A botanical garden at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) is working with communities like Dena’s, to conserve plant genetic wealth threatened by forest encroachment.
“It is a project between the government of the Peoples Republic of China and the government of the Republic of Kenya,” says Prof. Robert Gituru, the founding Director, Sino Africa Joint Research Center SAJOREC, which hosts the garden.
Established in 2014 by Kenyan and Chinese scientists, the garden invites communities to take unique and endangered plants in the country for conservation at the facility.
These include indigenous, medicinal and rare plants found in Kenya, says Prof. Gituru, adding that:
“By conserving them at the garden, they are studied to understand their unique traits like growth, adoptability, economic and genetic characteristics.”
This information is then shared with the public to help them convert the skills into conserving the plants at their natural habitats in future, he added.
“A scientist has to go to the field because that is where there is biodiversity,” says Prof. Gituru. “But having a botanical garden near a study facility is important because this is where one can make references and records.”
According to him, the facility will help Kenya tap indigenous knowledge and make advances in medical research.
“Majority of Kenyans and the rest of Africa depend to a large extent on herbal medicine,” he says. “Our plants are a living pharmacy. When someone chooses to use it to cure illnesses, it is in order.”
According to the genetic resources research institute at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KARLO), Kenya had over 7,500 plant species growing naturally by 2015.
Meanwhile, Dena says an initiative like the botanical garden may hold the answer to protecting Kenya’s plant genetic wealth and indigenous knowledge.
“But such gardens should be established in all parts of the country to ensure that communities can easily access them without travelling long distances,” says Dena.
This work was produced as a result of a grant provided by the Africa-China Reporting Project managed by the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopian (PAMACC News) - African civil society organizations on climate change have been at the forefront in building momentum for vulnerable people on the continent and other developing economies to access climate justice.
The voices were high and loud going into the UN Conference of Parties (COP21) on Climate Change which produced the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.
But these voices have gone down low after the talks.
Two years after Paris, most countries on the continent have slowed in climate action.
Sudanese scientist and climate activist, Dr. Shaddad Mauwa, has sat in meetings, shouted and held placards in demonstrations at the local, continental and global stages to clamour for climate justice.
He acknowledged that though African climate change actors – governments, parliamentarians, negotiators, civil society – are doing better than before, there seems to be a wall that has become difficult to break.
“There are many issues still not going in the line of what Africa will like to see,” he said.
For him, these issues include the commitment of developed economies to heed to the Paris Agreement in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lack of access to climate funds by developing countries and poor implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to be climate-resilient.
Pushing the African Climate Agenda
The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has for almost a decade served as the largest advocacy platform for CSOs in Africa.
The activities of the Alliance resonates with the global call for action against climate change proclaimed by the United Nations, with a singular clarion call that no single individual, institution, country or region can single-handedly defeat the threats posed by the changing climate and the quest for achieving a sustainable development while leaving no one behind.
Secretary-General of the Organization, Mithika Mwenda, however, says the major concern is how to make the Paris Climate Agreement relevant to the vulnerable farmer who needs to irrigate his farm all year round to produce food and the community that gets displaced by flood anytime it rains.
“Having the Agreement is one thing and getting it implemented is another thing,” he said. “One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to push the governments to focus more on implementation because now we have a framework which is supposed to go on the ground”.
It is a shared opinion that Africa is not deficit in policy formulation. But getting the thoughts off paper to achieve set goals on the ground becomes problematic. Lack of finance for implementation is often cited as hindrance.
PACJA has been pushing the international community to provide sufficient funds for the implementation of provisions in the Paris Agreement, which includes each country’s NDCs, to ensure integration of climate change into the new paradigms of low-carbon development and climate resilience pathways.
“We are very optimistic, though it is not an easy thing to do. Africans and the global community have no choice; we have to act on climate change. We have frameworks in countries that if we build on, we can have very transformative economies,” said Mithika.
Building a stronger CSO Alliance
The adoption of the Paris Agreement left many stakeholders and countries unable to shift from the negotiation mode to implementation, including many civil society groups.
PACJA envisions a global environment free from the threat of climate change with sustainable development, equity and justice for all.
The Alliance acknowledges there is still more ground to cover around low-carbon, climate-resilient, green economy discourses.
At its Second Extra-Ordinary General Assembly meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 23, 2018, The Alliance elected the Continental Executive Board as the implementing organ of decisions and policies of the organization.
Newly elected Chairperson of the Board, John Bonds Bideri, says building capacities of local CSOs remains crucial to PACJA to support grassroots initiatives to deal with climate vagaries.
“The most important thing is that the vulnerable people should have that protection at the global, continental and community levels in terms of responding to issues or challenges that affect them,” he stated.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopian (PAMACC News) - African civil society organizations on climate change have been at the forefront in building momentum for vulnerable people on the continent and other developing economies to access climate justice.
The voices were high and loud going into the UN Conference of Parties (COP21) on Climate Change which produced the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.
But these voices have gone down low after the talks.
Two years after Paris, most countries on the continent have slowed in climate action.
Sudanese scientist and climate activist, Dr. Shaddad Mauwa, has sat in meetings, shouted and held placards in demonstrations at the local, continental and global stages to clamour for climate justice.
He acknowledged that though African climate change actors – governments, parliamentarians, negotiators, civil society – are doing better than before, there seems to be a wall that has become difficult to break.
“There are many issues still not going in the line of what Africa will like to see,” he said.
For him, these issues include the commitment of developed economies to heed to the Paris Agreement in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lack of access to climate funds by developing countries and poor implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to be climate-resilient.
Pushing the African Climate Agenda
The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has for almost a decade served as the largest advocacy platform for CSOs in Africa.
The activities of the Alliance resonates with the global call for action against climate change proclaimed by the United Nations, with a singular clarion call that no single individual, institution, country or region can single-handedly defeat the threats posed by the changing climate and the quest for achieving a sustainable development while leaving no one behind.
Secretary-General of the Organization, Mithika Mwenda, however, says the major concern is how to make the Paris Climate Agreement relevant to the vulnerable farmer who needs to irrigate his farm all year round to produce food and the community that gets displaced by flood anytime it rains.
“Having the Agreement is one thing and getting it implemented is another thing,” he said. “One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to push the governments to focus more on implementation because now we have a framework which is supposed to go on the ground”.
It is a shared opinion that Africa is not deficit in policy formulation. But getting the thoughts off paper to achieve set goals on the ground becomes problematic. Lack of finance for implementation is often cited as hindrance.
PACJA has been pushing the international community to provide sufficient funds for the implementation of provisions in the Paris Agreement, which includes each country’s NDCs, to ensure integration of climate change into the new paradigms of low-carbon development and climate resilience pathways.
“We are very optimistic, though it is not an easy thing to do. Africans and the global community have no choice; we have to act on climate change. We have frameworks in countries that if we build on, we can have very transformative economies,” said Mithika.
Building a stronger CSO Alliance
The adoption of the Paris Agreement left many stakeholders and countries unable to shift from the negotiation mode to implementation, including many civil society groups.
PACJA envisions a global environment free from the threat of climate change with sustainable development, equity and justice for all.
The Alliance acknowledges there is still more ground to cover around low-carbon, climate-resilient, green economy discourses.
At its Second Extra-Ordinary General Assembly meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 23, 2018, The Alliance elected the Continental Executive Board as the implementing organ of decisions and policies of the organization.
Newly elected Chairperson of the Board, John Bonds Bideri, says building capacities of local CSOs remains crucial to PACJA to support grassroots initiatives to deal with climate vagaries.
“The most important thing is that the vulnerable people should have that protection at the global, continental and community levels in terms of responding to issues or challenges that affect them,” he stated.
