Despite the enacting of the Community Lands Act of 2016, pastoral communities in Kenya have continued to be disadvantaged by the weak nature of their land tenure rights.
The government has passed laws that routinely undervalue pastoralists’ land and undermine pastoralism as a system of production and main source of livelihood in the drylands.
I come back home a worried man, even more perturbed than I was before, about the march of colonialism under the guise of conservation.
The effects of the British colonial policy of subjugation through dispossession and exile continue to reverberate among the Wakasighau.
Addressing the inflammatory belief that pastoral herd accumulation leads to range degradation and desertification, the “new range ecology” has demonstrated the rationality behind building up herds in good years as an adaptive strategy for surviving the devastating droughts that characterize drylands. The Elephant in conversation with Dr Hussein Wario, PhD in Socio-ecology and Executive Director at Center for Research and Development in Drylands, Kenya.
The problem of landlessness in Kenya started with the stealing of land by the British colonialists and has been perpetuated by powerful individuals in the top echelons of post-independence governments.
Violent evictions of families from their homes are not exceptional events. They go to the heart of Kenya’s political economy and its long history of valorising the rights of those who hold private title.
Land adjudication is the megaphone that is heralding the dismantling of the pastoralist way of life and wildlife conservation is a ploy to sedentarise pastoralists.
The Land Value Act does not make provision for the valuation of communal land in a manner that reflects the social-economic practices of the drylands communities.
“Conservancies” in Kenya are presented as an example of conservation by and for local people, but they can be a device to grab land. Unless this changes, the future for wildlife conservation looks bleak.
The colonial powers that reside within the conservation sector often tout “alternative livelihoods” as key to the economic empowerment of pastoralist communities. But this flimsy window dressing barely hides the fraud within. Conservation interests have built a cauldron into which the extremely wealthy are pouring startling amounts of money to subvert systems, grab lands, and plunder resources.
Conservation is a principle; tourism is a business, so says leading conservation scholar Dr. Mordecai Ogada. The conservation politics are laden with racial hierarchies, lies, violence and misinformation used to subjugate locals in a bid to wrestle precious; and space from them in ways that upset human-wildlife coexistence.