Natural Resource Management By The People And For The People
The past few weeks saw the nation celebrate the anniversary of devolution. The main purpose of devolution is to create a space for local citizens to participate and benefit from the fullness of the resources available to us as a nation including our natural resources. Local stewardship of natural resources potentially provides our devolved system of government the ability to better meet the needs of individual counties and their communities in a manner not feasible in the past centralized system, whose aim in managing natural resources was to create national identities out of the vestiges of colonialism and to guide the economy and growth through a central administration. This brought high concentrations of political power and discretion over resource allocation to an elite few.
Devolution is expected to create a more direct link between the establishment and the local people. None state actors foster participatory leadership and stewardship and enhance accountability through their objective critiquing of duty bearers both in public private partnerships. So there needs to be synergy between all stakeholders working on natural resource management. Devolving stewardship of the environment to the counties, establishes platforms for discussion, debate and planning giving local communities the rights and abilities to manage and benefit from their forest, wildlife and marine resources through Pluralistic decision-making.
Our nation has one of the best constitutions in the world. Our laws look good on paper, but the reality is that we need to give decentralization time to take so to speak, as county level democratic institutions are new and developing. Managing the environment under a centralized system of government has been a challenge consequently; transitioning to a devolved system of government requires that we be diligent in order to establish a strong foundation for good governance.
The past system was unable to mitigate against the unsustainable extraction of natural resources and continued fragmentation of wildlife habitats, inadequate collaboration among the institutions tasked with the managing various natural resources, poor enforcement of existing legislation and policies, low levels of public awareness on the importance of conserving natural resources and inadequate technical and financial competence within the government and other actors.
Issues of critical importance in natural resource management as we devolve are: ensuring that tourism is optimally managed. Our wildlife is rapidly declining yet tourism, which is as a key economic driver is significantly dependant on it. Increased population, poor land-use regulation, unregulated encroachment by agriculture and urbanization, poaching, the lack of wildlife user rights on community and private land have been cited by scientists as some of the reasons for the decline. The development of a geothermal power in areas such as Hell’s Gate National Park – a gazetted national park is causing serious degradation and is a detriment to tourism. Irregular well drilling has been going on here for decades. Large swaths of the park have been ruined and the concomitant operational traffic has resulted in the killing of valued wildlife. What is ironic is that what is being touted as our green energy boom is now a threat to our national parks and tourism our highest source of income. The trade off we face as the growing need for power comes into conflict with our conservation values is a conversation that need delicate consideration. We need to develop new energy sources in a way that maximizes societal gain and minimizes environmental impact.
Water is also an important resource yet we have very little information with regards to river flows and underground aquifer recharge throughout the country so there is very little reliable supply and demand analysis. Our government is involved in several water related projects but how do we partner to mitigate against inadequate downstream analysis, inadequate soil analysis leading to salinization, resistance by local communities to change, to irrigated agriculture by pastoralists for example? We need to dialogue to guarantee that the projects are based on sound science and best practices for sustainable use in order to minimize the environmental, social and economic impacts of these schemes.
The same goes for our forests. How does policy and practice encourage community participation in forest management and profit sharing arrangements in order to give communities a means to enhance their involvement in decision making, forest management and livelihoods? The encroachment of forests is a provocative issue requiring a participatory approach to bring well thought out solutions, strong leadership and political goodwill. The apathy from communities towards wildlife and forestry law enforcement and governance stem from a lack of tangible benefits and incentives from the said laws.
The constitutional reforms of 2010 introduced important institutional changes intended to turn a conflict-ridden and exclusionary socio-political environment into a more democratic and inclusive one. Devolution on its own will not benefit society, but given the right impetus with respect to good policies and legislation that empowers and build social capital among locals, devolution can be a very effective tool in natural resource management. Good stewardship of our natural resources should result in the creation of livelihoods, the protection of the most vulnerable communities, and foster local development through sound corporate social responsibility policies. We need to build capacity in natural resource management to include ways of improving representation, accountability and transparency so that the people of Kenya have the rights, responsibility and benefits of sharing control between government and themselves. Studies emphasize that no decentralized approach will work without institutions to make politician accountable to their constituents.
The degree to which as we as resource users are organized and aware of our rights is critical to influencing the outcomes of devolution. Our knowledge of and participation in the formulation of the laws and policies that guide our natural resource management can help us to challenge élitist and self-serving behavior. Devolution policies address equity issues and can enhance participation of marginalized groups and women in decision-making.
In order to see if and how it is it is working, we need to develop indicators for monitoring and evaluating decentralization and its outcomes. Some of the outcomes we would like to see in terms of devolution and the establishment of environmental standards are that sufficient and appropriate powers need to be transferred to local democratic institutions in order to secure rights, support equity and justice, and institute transparent adjudication. Awareness raising and public education are key drivers of social change, participatory democracy, respect for human rights and good governance in our devolution process. Let us hope the reality on the ground will reflect this rhetoric.