CORRUPTION PRECIPITATES CLIMATE CHANGE

[By Wanjohi Kabukuru in Rift Valley, Kenya 10/July/2009] Who would have ever imagined that the tentacles of corruption can precipitate climate change? Well, Kenyans know this first hand.
A biting drought; gruesome famine; acute water shortage; a gnawing power rationing schedule and all the stuff of pestilence are the harsh effects of climate change battering Kenyans today.
Kenyans are now reaping the whirlwind effects of runaway corruption, which saw the country’s politically-correct elites excising one of the country’s strategic water towers for their own benefit way back in the 1990s. All these are courtesy of ignoring sound environmental advice and hiving off parts of the Mau Forest complex for personal gains.
The Mau forest complex situated in the Great Rift Valley, covers a substantial area of Kenya’s south-western highlands, representing the largest remaining near-continuous block of montane indigenous forest in East Africa, with five main forest reserves namely Eastern, Western, South-western Mau, Trans-Mara, Ol Pusimoru, and there is a sixth large block, the Maasai Mau. The Mau Complex has deep fertile volcanic soils. Being the largest closed-canopy forest ecosystem of Kenya the Mau Complex is estimated to be as large as the forests of Mt. Kenya and the Aberdares combined. Rift Valley and Western provinces depend entirely on the Mau as it is the single most important water catchments for these two expansive administrative regions in Kenya and neighbouring countries.
Exactly 140,000ha of the Mau Complex were excised during Kenya’s second President Daniel Moi’s tenure. The reason for this excision was said to be the “settlement of the Ogiek”. The Ogiek are a minority community in Kenya who are primarily forest-dwellers. What many didn’t know then was the fact that this was a ruse to pave way for extensive illegal, irregular and ill-planned settlements, as well as unlawful forest resources extraction and overuse of water by large scale irrigation plantations by top politicians in the Moi era.
“Since I took over as the minister for environment, I found out with sadness that issues concerning the environment were those dealing with precious stones but those concerning conservation of forests, alerts on rivers drying up, looming drought and others were largely ignored.” Says environment minister John Michuki.
Kenya’s Grand Coalition government is currently grappling with a decision to reclaim the forest, forestall the harsh effects of climate change and face political backlash or allow the status quo to remain and be damned ecologically. Reclaiming the forest for reforestation means relocating over 25,000 settlers within the 400, 000ha of the Mau Forest Complex and dealing with a possible political fallout in Kenya’s feisty politics.
“The Kenya Land Alliance collected empirical evidence that points out that the excision of forests within the complex was illegally and irregularly done. Simply put in excising the Mau Forest Complex, the Moi government failed the acid test of public policy doctrine that asserts that government has an inalienable duty to protect the commonwealth – air, water, wildlife, public health, genetic heritage and forests, which we all inherit and own together and which none of us can own individually.” Odenda Lumumba, the national coordinator of the land rights lobby Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) asserts.
At the centre of this storm are the intra-party politics of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) a key partner in the coalition government. ODM leader and Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga who supports the resettlement of the Mau Complex settlers has found himself trying to quell dissent in his party as his position on the Mau has been opposed by a majority of ODM MPs from the Rift Valley province led by his party’s deputy William Ruto, who commands huge support in Rift Valley and also doubles up as agriculture minister.
“The excisions and the widespread encroachments have led to the destruction of nearly a quarter of the Mau Complex area over the past 15 years. Such an extensive and on-going destruction of a key natural asset for the country is nothing less than a national emergency.” Odinga says. “I will not be intimidated. I will not be blackmailed. I am ready to pay the price. I am doing this for Kenya. It is a matter of national interest. I am on the side of the truth and it never fails.”
In late July, Raila named the illegal beneficiaries of the Mau in parliament. A list that read like who-was-who in Moi’s government. In mid August Raila warned the politicians opposed to the Mau reclamation:
“The Rift Valley leaders are fighting for their own rights because they are the ones who grabbed the land, sub-divided it and sold it to to the small people but we want them to know that we will take back the land and prosecute them.” Raila warned.
Initially the issue was viewed as ‘ODM’s Achilles Heel’. Even when the warnings were sounded as far back as the 1990’s when the excisions were taking place, few took an interest. Today, the circumstances have changed, thanks to climate change. Drought, water scarcity and food shortage have forced the country to revisit the issues.
The Rift Valley legislators led by Ruto have had a hard time explaining themselves to the public:
“We are not madmen to oppose the conservation of the Mau water tower. We know and feel the consequences of destruction. Any efforts to portray Rift Valley members of Parliament as opposing conservation are cheap and primitive.” Says Ruto.
Key tourist destinations and reserves that are both nationally and internationally recognized notably the Maasai Mara, Serengeti and Kakamega Forest Reserve which depend on the Mau, are all distressed by the current scenario at play over the Mau Complex. The illegitimate occupation of the forest complex has not only unleashed on Kenya an environmental plague of sorts, but it has now made other capitals to ask Nairobi the hard questions.
“The destruction of the Mau Complex has even attracted international concern. Those who have invaded the forest for timber and farming are like people who have lost hope for their country and want to grab anything at their disposal. Rivers which originate from the Mau are affected by the destruction and their future is now uncertain.” Michuki asserts.
Lending her voice to the Mau Complex saga is Nobel laureate Professor Wangari Maathai who castigates the authorities for failing to rein in on corruption:
“The gradual degradation of Mau Forest complex has been attributed to decades of mismanagement, compounded by irresponsible and corrupt practices by the very people who were expected to protect it. When forests are degraded, rainfall patterns and micro climates change, volumes of water in rivers are reduced and finally disappear, lakes recede, underground water levels go down, vegetation and crops fail and biodiversity gradually dies. Quite obviously the negative impacts on the Mau affect not only Kenyans but East Africans in general and the people of Sudan and Egypt.”
The reality today is that the Mau Complex is a classic case study of the interplay of geo-politics, hydro-politics and the harsh effects of climate change whose ramifications will be felt all the way in Egypt should the Rift Valley MPs opposed to the relocation of the settlers have their way. The ecological disaster awaiting is more dreadful than the political brinkmanship surrounding the Mau currently.
As late as 2005, Dar es Salaam, Kampala and Cairo had started applying pressure on Nairobi to arrest the degeneration of the Mau Complex before it got out of hand. Lately the pressure has not only been applied by the same Nile Basin countries but also by a super power, Tokyo.
Interestingly however, the Mau maybe in Kenya, but it’s an international resource.
The Mau Complex affects Tanzania by virtue of the Mara River which feeds into Serengeti and Ewaso Ngiro River which is the principal inflow of Lake Natron in Tanzania. Tanzanian authorities closely monitoring the changes of the Mara and Ewaso Ngiro Rivers raised their concerns through the East African Community (EAC) after the harsh realities were noted infringing on the ecosystem of the world famous pristine park the Serengeti, four years ago.
The Mau Complex is not really a Kenyan affair on its own. It’s an international issue whose ramifications should the Mau collapse are nightmarish and unimaginable.
For starters the Mara River is classified as an ‘international river’ shared between Kenya and Tanzania. However since it finishes its course on the Lake Victoria, the dimensions grow bigger and the entry of other new players comes in. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) which runs the Mara River Basin Initiative (MRBI) notes of the Mara River:
“The Mara River is an international river, shared between Kenya and Tanzania. The Mara River Basin is about 13,750 km2, of which about 65% is located in Kenya and 35% in Tanzania. It runs through the Maasai Mara Game Reserve on the Kenyan side and the Serengeti National Park on the Tanzanian side, both of global conservation significance and of great economic importance. It powers its water into Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile.”
In other words the Mau complex impinges on Africa’s largest freshwater lake, the Lake Victoria, which is the main ‘source’ of the River Nile. And that is how Kampala and Cairo come into play. Anything that affects Lake Victoria has a multiplier consequence on the Nile (read Egypt).
Egypt and all the other major movers of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) namely, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda have all put pressure on Nairobi to keep the Mau ‘alive’. Kenya too is a member of the NBI.
“Even a country like Egypt would have an interest in Kenya protecting the Mau Forest Complex because the Nile is essentially a hydrological system that is fed from many river basins. The Mau forest and other sources of water are important to the riparian countries hat have come together under the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative. The cumulative effect of what has been taking place in the Mau is that there will be less and less water not only in Lake Victoria but also downstream.” Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director says.
Alula Yohannes in his paper “The Politics of the Nile” notes that Egypt has never wanted the contentious 1959 Nile Treaty which gave Egypt exclusive rights to 76% of the Nile waters to be reviewed and is likely to play dirty should it feel that the source of the Nile is threatened:
“Egypt seems adamant on the continuation of the 1959 agreement and does not want to permit new vistas and agreements on the sharing of the Nile waters. Instead of cooperating with Ethiopia and other Nile countries, Egypt resorts to subterfuge on a number of occasions to divert the attention of world public opinion and even went to the extent of sponsoring disgruntled political groupings such as the Somali factions and the Eritrean government as a form of deterrence and probably as political intimidation directed against Ethiopia. Egypt fails to recognize that ultimately it is only through negotiation and mutual understanding that it can secure its permanent interest; it also fails to understand that the present generation of Ethiopians will nonetheless exhibit resolve to use the waters of the Nile for the benefit of their people. Egypt cannot employ the old-fashioned Khedive Ismail strategy or British control of the headwaters of the Nile.”
For the last 10 years, the Nairobi-based world authority on the environment, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) under its aptly named Division of Early Warning and Assessment (DEWA) has kept a close watch over the Mau and produced concrete reports complete with critical analysis and recommendations on the grim prospects fomented by the settlers within the Mau.
UNEP asserts that owing to the nefarious climatic changes, Kenya stands to lose some $1.8 billion in revenue from tea; tourism and energy if the degradation of the Mau continues. When one brings into play the hydropolitics of the Mau within the East and Northern Africa geopolitics the losses are simply unquantifiable.
“A lot of research has been done into the loss of the Mau forests in the country. What UNEP has documented and brought to the attention of the government is that if the current trend continues, the whole forest ecosystem will be lost in the next 15 years. It is worth noting that 12 rivers arise from the ecosystem, flowing into Lakes Victoria, Nakuru, Natron and Turkana. So we are not talking about the forest area, but a whole series of benefits that millions of people derive from the forest ecosystem. When we consider their contribution to Kenya’s tea, tourism and power sectors, we estimate that $1.8 billion of annual revenue will be lost if the Mau forests are destroyed.” Steiner reveals.
This is not the first time evictions of the illegal settlers have been on the cards. In 2005 and even 2006 similar attempts were made to reclaim the depleted forest but political expediency reined in environmental concerns. Now times have changed.
Looking at the current saga from a global scale perhaps it is noteworthy to recognize that in December 2000 the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) issued The Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future dossier, which warned of widespread instability, “necessitated by a shortage of the single most contested resource in the planet – drinking water.” The key hotspots were named and one of them was the River Nile.
“By 2015 nearly half the world's population—more than 3 billion people—will live in countries that are "water-stressed"—have less than 1,700 cubic meters of water per capita per year—mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and northern China. In the developing world, 80 percent of water usage goes into agriculture, a proportion that is not sustainable; and in 2015 a number of developing countries will be unable to maintain their levels of irrigated agriculture. Over pumping of groundwater in many of the world's important grain-growing regions will be an increasing problem; about 1,000 tons of water are needed to produce a ton of grain.” The CIA dossier approved by the National Intelligence Committee notes and hastens to add on the Nile: “Egypt is proceeding with a major diversion of water from the Nile, which flows from Ethiopia and Sudan, both of which will want to draw more water from the Nile for their own development by 2015. Water-sharing arrangements are likely to become more contentious.”
Already within the Nile Basin Initiative, whenever the issue of the Nile Treaty comes up, tempers flare.
For abetting corruption Kenya made a date with the grim realities of climate change. The results are not too pleasant. These are the harsh realities facing Kenya today for its costly gamble and endless political sensationalism with a strategic ecological reserve as the Mau. (ENDS)- [EDITOR'S NOTE: An abridged version of this article was first published in The East African]