A catch 22 in the case of the people vs the forest
One of the hottest topics in Kenya currently is the protection of the forests. Over the years, sneaky folks have crouched into our forests and made gazillions by selling out protions of the forests to unsuspecting wananchi(citizens). Being an agro-based economy, we are very passionate about our land and many a dispute has many a kenyan has been involved in a land dispute. Families are broken, murders too all in the name of a man protecting his soil so when the minister declares that all people living within the forest boundaries must go or be cleared out; you can only imagine the havoc this brings about.
He is right. It is his job to oversee the protection of forest reserves so when he brings the bulldosers to town and tears down the villages within the forest, he is within his rights.
The other side of the coin is the heart wreching, tear invoking stories of the families who have no where to go now. In some cases, they may know that this is protected land but still purchases but those are a handful.
The rest are just people who needed an option to establish a place to live.
I do not envy both parties. The question that will constatly come up is who should be priority here..should the clearing cotinue to preserve the life of the forest and its benefits, or should the people who live there continue to do so much to the detriment of the natural resource?
Ofcourse relocation is a probable suggestion but then again, we have yet to see a successful mission of this sorts....
1 Comments:
Yes. A very controversial topic which has to be addressed now and not a day later. My problem with the our people is that we always wish our problems away... our politicians think if they ignore issues as far reaching as land clashes, land grabbing, protection of forests, matatu culture, bad roads etc. that they will go away. The longer we continue to do this the worse the situation becomes.
RELOCATION is the answer. I recently read that the govt was willing to allocate some 30,000 acres to farmers from India for a commercial farming pilot project. Evidently we are not short of arable land in this country! A little govt support and political will can change the country or at least put us on the road to change.
I feel the root cause of all our problems are our leaders and untill such a time that we have have exposed and committed younger leaders... we aint going NOWHERE!!!
Sorry to crowd your space with such a lengthy comment... but it hurts to see what we are doing to ourselves.
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