Until seventy years ago, Nairobi was a grazing land for Masais, but now it is all brick and mortar. So, I’m stuck(?) on biodiversity, the impacts, underlying causes of commodification of natural resources in relation to biodiversity, and to me, destroying biodiversity, is actually because of the products and the profits we get from the products. But by the end of the day, it becomes a case of killing the goose but still wanting the golden eggs.

I’ll talk briefly about the Mao forest which is one of the biggest indigenous forests in Kenya. It is around 250 km from Nairobi here, it measures about 400,000 hectares and is the source of 15 rivers, which feed five lakes. One of the lakes is Lake Victoria, which is the biggest tropical lake in the world, and the other is Lake Nakuru (?) which is a ramsa(?) site and home to one million flamingos. One of the rivers which flows out of the Mao forest is the Mara River, which feeds the Mara Serengeti ecosystem. The Masai Mara has recently been declared a wild wonder, the Serengeti is a wild heritage site.

So, the Mao forest has been home to the Oki(?) indigenous community for millennia, but there has been massive destruction of that forest as a result of various causes which include tea plantations, logging activities by multinational companies, and small scale slash and burn agriculture activities. These three activities have led to the massive destruction of the Mao forest, and as a result, almost all of the rivers are drying up, threatening the drying up of the lakes. For example, the Lake Nakuru(?) is said to be on the verge(?) of actually drying up and sant(?) has predicted that it will not be there in the next twenty years. The other result of the destruction of the Mao biodiversity is increased drought in downstream areas, frequent forced evictions of the Oki(?) community because of massive pressure from the tourism industry downstream and the blame goes to the Oki(?) that they are the people destroying the forests, which is not normally the case. And when the rains come, there are massive floods in downstream areas.

What are the underlying causes of all of this? The cognition of indigenous communities, and the importer draws the play in the protecting of biodiversity(???). For example, communities like the Masai are actually viewed as commodities; they play a very little part in the tourism sector in this country. And the other cause is massive corruption. We find that the most land, most biodiversity is still inducted in indigenous peoples lands, but because of pressure from agricultural communities who actually control political mechanisms, we find that the Kenyan government normally dishes out massive amounts of land to settle these increasing agricultural communities, because they have more food so they …(???) is actually very high like among indigenous people. The government normally dishes out these lands, because in Kenya, all land and all natural resources belong to the state. So mostly you find that these indigenous communities don’t have any mechanisms to control natural resources under their territories. There is not actually political will to fight the corruption. This leads to poor policies, and one example of the poor policies is the Nairobi national park. The government comes up with a wildlife policy that is aimed at protecting and guarding wildlife, but at the same time comes up with a land policy that advocates for the subdivision of land into individual parcels and then allocates individuals land around the national park, stressing the animals, and cutting off wildlife migratory corridors. So when wildlife gets out of the park, they find it very difficult to come back to the park.

Another reason for commodification of natural resources is high poverty levels. Because of the morton and columbic (?) system in Kenya, a very capitalistic system, we find that indigenous people are under great pressure to start living like the rest of people, owning property, owning vehicles, owning big houses. The only resource they have to sell is land, and land means actually destroying biodiversity. To me, policies are our greatest contributor to commodification of biodiversity. So the question that begs immediate attention is, what can be done to regain control. We can say that in Kenya there have been very positive strides in the recent past, because of the pressure the government has, because of all these kinds of meetings taking place in Kenya. So we find that in the process, the government is taking initiatives to come up with laws and policies that will help guard biodiversity. Last year the government of Kenya enacted the Kenya Forest Act 205, and in that act communities can …(???) and enter into forest agreements with the government. We find that that is a small opening for indigenous communities to actually gain control of natural resources through gaining control of the forest and their land.

However, we are not very comfortable with it, because before that malignant (?) agreement can be approved by the government, we must have…(???) we must submit the malignant (?) plan to the government for approval. So it’s the case of somebody telling you that he has to give you permission to control your house, which is not actually a very good thing. In Kenya there is the process of a formulation of a national land policy. As indigenous people, we are rejecting that policy because we know that what it advocates for would not be in our interest. For example, it delays (?) to the land ownership that one can have, and to us, the greater the land, the better that we can conserve biodiversity. They are saying, if you have so much land that you are not using, then you start paying taxes for it, but we are asking these people is that our land is not idle, when we let is stay like that, we are preserving biodiversity. That does not mean it is idle, it’s doing some important work for humanity. Kenya is also in the process of coming up with an intellectual property regime that would protect traditional knowledge systems, folklore and genetic resources. The tax(?) was formed last year, it has not yet started its work. We hope that indigenous and local communities will be able to report on it. The government is also in the process of formulating a new wildlife policy that will include the interests of all communities in protecting this important natural resource. The biggest bone of contention is commercialization, and the support of hunting.

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The speeches from Regaining Control of the Commons: WSF 2007 are provided for information and educational purposes. The transcription has been undertaken on a volunteer basis. Due to resource limitations we are unable to provide a complete transcription. We apologise for the breaks in the text.

Disclaimer: The view in this and the other articles do not (neccessarily) represent the position or views of Friends of the Earth Australia nor Friends of the Earth International.