W2A031K
<#/><I> <h> Women in soil and water conservation projects: An assessment </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>The weaknesses of centre-periphery planning paralleling an urban-rural division was heavily criticized in the literature of the second development plan period. <#/>This approach to development planning is a legacy of colonialism. <#/>Decisions were made at the project headquarters usually in Nairobi and passed for adoption and implementation to the periphery which was assumed to be composed predominantly of a male rural peasant farming population. <#/>With Independence, efforts have been made to shift decision-making to the large population who are the targets of development programmes. <#/>Initial efforts were reflected in the self-help development policy adopted in the second decade of Independence. <#/>The latest effort is the District Focus Strategy for Rural Development. <#/>These efforts are consistent with World Bank concerns expressed in their recent report, which argues that African governments can only attain sustainable economic growth with equity in the next century through channelling the energies of the population at large, and ensuring that ordinary people participate in designing and implementing development programmes.
<#/>This chapter evaluates the Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme in Kitui District in the light of this concern and demonstrates that the top-to-bottom development approach has not been eliminated. <#/>The only factor in the development planning equation that has changed is the target population. <#/>Most males have migrated to areas outside Mutomo Division. <#/>Most of the peasant population who are also the target of rural development programmes are, consequently, women. <#/>This study was conducted in Mutomo Division in 1987. <#/>The information was gathered during two visits by the author. <#/>Information was collected through in-depth interviews and observations of on-going activities. <#/>The respondents included programme personnel, farmers, local leaders, women's group members and leaders and mwethya group members and leaders. <#/>The field information was supplemented by secondary data from previous studies and from programme documents.
<#/><h> Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme </h>
<#/>Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme covers the southern division of Kitui District in Eastern Province. <#/>The division includes the locations of Ikanga, Kanziko, Ikutha, Mutha, Voo, Athi and Mutomo. <#/>The programme covers part of the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) area of Kenya, which the government in its Fourth Development Plan (1980-84) gave high priority for development. <#/>The programme was planned in 1982 with a five-year perspective, is funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and mainly manned by technical officers from the Ministry of Agriculture.
<#/>Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme is linked to government administration. <#/>At the programme headquarters in Nairobi is a steering committee whose chairman is the head of the Local Resource and Development Division of the Ministry of Agriculture. <#/>The committee has representation from the Treasury, the Farm Management Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Livestock, the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, the Office of the President, the Danish Mission in Nairobi and the programme staff consisting of the Kenyan programme manager and the Danish programme co-ordinator. <#/>The Steering Committee meets twice a year and makes programme decisions which are then communicated to the programme staff.
<#/>At the field level (in the Mutomo office, within the division) the programme is manned by the Ministry of Agriculture technical staff. <#/>The hierarchy of the programme corresponds to the administrative structure of Kitui southern division. <#/>At the division level the programme is headed by the manager who is also the Divisional Agricultural Extension Officer. <#/>He is responsible for all the programme management activities. <#/>His counterpart is the Danish programme co-ordinator. <#/>These two officers represent the programme at the District Development Committee. <#/>At the next lower level are the component parts of the programme: The extension section, the soil conservation section, the water section and the survey section. <#/>These sections have heads who represent the programme at the Division Development Committee. <#/>At the locational level are programme offices headed by the locational agricultural extension officers who report to the divisional heads. <#/>At the sublocational levels are the agricultural technical assistants who report to the locational offices.
<#/>The programme manager and the Danish co-ordinator attend the District Development Committee where decisions are made on programme projects. <#/>Before the end of each year, the programme head office in Mutomo communicates to the locational development committees on the numbers and types of projects which will be undertaken. <#/>The locational development committees apportion the projects among the sublocations, and the sublocation development committees recommend where to situate the projects.
<#/>One main objective of the programme is to train the local population to implement soil conservation measures and improved agricultural techniques. <#/>This emerged out of recognition that in the programme area, the soil seals easily; this leads to diminished infiltration and water run-off. <#/>Soil erosion combined with poor rainfall result in poor agricultural production. <#/>Soil conservation measures on land include layout and construction of terraces on steep slopes, contour ploughing on land with small slopes, layout and construction of cut-off drains and artificial waterways in farmlands and <-/embarkments> with grasses. <#/>Soil conservation on grazing land includes rehabilitation of eroded pastures through reseeding/replanting with grasses and fodder trees and/or fencing; contour ploughing on steep slopes; gully control measures such as diversion ditches, vegetation, wood/stone materials or gabions; fencing to keep cattle from gullies. <#/>Improved agricultural techniques include: contour ploughing and cropping to prevent erosion and conserve the moisture; loosening of the soils before the start of the rains; keeping weeds down to avoid competition with crops; and introduction of proper and timely tillage methods.
<#/>A second major component of the programme is conservation and supply of water to the population in Mutomo Division. <#/>The geological nature of the area does not allow large-scale exploitation of the main water sources. <#/>The run-off water is, however, stored in surface or sub-surface sources by means of water conservation techniques. <#/>The most commonly used measures include sub-surface dams, earth dams, shallow wells and water tanks.
<#/>The overall objective of the programme is improvement of the resource base for production and improved living conditions of the population of the surrounding communities. <#/>The programme trains the local population in implementation of soil and water conservation measures and improved agricultural techniques. <#/>The programme depends on local input of free labour. <#/>To ensure initial and continued local involvement, the programme has sometimes used incentives.
<#/><h> Women's activities </h>
<#/><ea/>Mwethya groups are based on the concept of mutual assistance or self-help. <#/>Traditionally, members of the community who had more work than they could cope with requested assistance from other members of the same community. <#/>Time was set aside for this activity, and depending on the type of work involved, groups composed of only men or only women or both men and women, were brought together for the work. <#/>These were not permanently organized units but a way of mobilizing community labour to perform certain individual and household activities.
<#/>Today, the concept of <ea/>mwethya has been broadened. <#/>These groups are self-help and form around a common need. <#/>Such activities may be initiated by group members themselves or as a response to local administration efforts to mobilize labour to address a community need. <#/>In response to Mutomo programme's requirement for community labour, many <ea/>mwethya groups have been formed. <#/>Others have formed with the sole purpose of <-/benefitting> from the programme's assistance which is mainly channelled through groups. <#/><ea/>Mwethya groups have undertaken soil and water conservation and farming activities. 
<#/><ea/>Mwethya groups are registered as self-help organizations with the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. <#/>The conditions for group membership vary and include membership of a particular community, beneficiaries of a particular project, friendship ties, kinship ties, religious ties or residence in a common administrative area. <#/>Participation in <ea/>mwethya group activities is compulsory for members and absentees are charged a fine. <#/>These groups are large, with memberships of between 50 and 200 people. <#/>Members are both men and women, but the majority of the members are women. <#/>Most men in the division are engaged in wage labour while others have migrated out of the area in search of wage employment. 
<#/><ea/>Mwethya groups each have a committee composed of a chairperson (usually a man), a secretary, a treasurer and three to six committee members. <#/>The committee members are elected through a democratic process. <#/>The committee in consultation with the members makes decisions concerning group activities. 
<#/><ea/>Mwethya group members contribute labour, money, livestock or materials for projects. <#/>The amount of labour time contributed depends on the amount of work required by a project and its urgency. <#/>Members specify days of the week to be set aside for project work. <#/>The number of days varies between one and three. <#/>When attendance is poor, the community and local leaders in charge of self-help activities use force and fines to induce attendance. 
<#/><ea/>Mwethya groups have been used in building schools, churches, health institutions and soil and water conservation work. <#/>The groups are provided with working tools to ensure that work is done. <#/>These implements also act as an incentive for members to participate in group work since they can be borrowed by members for use on their individual farms. <#/>Since <ea/>mwethya group activities respond to community needs, members benefit from services and facilities provided by the completed projects. <#/>Some groups have farms from which produce is sold and the proceeds contributed to project activities. <#/><ea/>Mwethya groups may also engage in income-generating activities, and the money is used on self-help projects. 
<#/>Women's groups form out of efforts to meet individual and groups needs. <#/>Most of these groups form in order to assist friends and relatives in need. <#/>After the needs have been met, the people often continue to meet and organize themselves into a group. <#/>Other groups form because they have seen others <-/benefitting> through their organization. <#/>Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme has actively encouraged groups to form so that programme assistance can be channelled through them. <#/>Social development officers of the Ministry of Culture and Social Services also encourage groups to form. <#/>Women's groups are registered with the Ministry of Culture and Social Services. <#/>An annual registration fee is paid. <#/>Membership is based on friendship, religion and kinship ties. <#/>Most members of these groups are women. <#/>The male members are very few and often elderly or very poor. <#/>The female members are usually married and live within the community. <#/>The average age is 30 to 40 years. <#/>Educational attainment varies, and membership fees ranges between 2 to 10 Kshs. 
<#/>Women's groups each have a committee consisting of a chairlady, a secretary, a treasurer and two or three members. <#/>The chairlady is usually older, articulate and confident. <#/>The treasurer is usually older and trusted. <#/>The secretary is usually younger and has to be literate. <#/>The committee is voted into office democratically and stays in office for one term of usually a year.
<#/>Women's groups mostly engage in farming activities since they are often lacking in other skills. <#/>They often have group farms from which they produce crops for sale. <#/>They also engage in other farming activities for wages. <#/>The money is often saved in the group account. <#/>The members also participate in farming activities on each other's farms for nominal fees. <#/>This is done on a rotational basis. <#/>Women's group activities are predominantly welfare functions. <#/>More recently, however, they are venturing into income-generating activities. <#/>Members contribute their labour, money and sometimes their livestock and materials. <#/>They in turn gain from the group. <#/>Apart from the activities based on mutual assistance, members can also borrow group implements issued by the programme for use on their own farms. <#/>Improved seeds from the programme which are planted on group farms are harvested and shared among members for growing on individual farms.
<#/><h> The impact of the programme in Mutomo Division </h>
<#/>Programme performance in soil and water conservation activities reflects the target population's understanding, commitment and participation in soil and water conservation activities. <#/>One major objective of Mutomo Soil and Water Conservation Programme is to train the local population in implementing soil and water conservation measures and improved agricultural techniques. <#/>This training took place among the programme staff and farmers within the division.
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W2A032K
<#/><I> <h> Women and the management of domestic energy </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Firewood is widely used, particularly in Third World countries. <#/>In Kenya over 93 per cent of rural household uses are met by fuelwood and over 98 per cent of this energy is taken up by cooking. <#/>This implies that fuelwood is the traditional energy source in rural Kenya and it is more accessible to the rural population for logistical and economic reasons. <#/>The central role played by fuelwood seems to be the case elsewhere in Africa. <#/>In Tanzania, over 90 per cent of the people use wood for cooking and heating. <#/>It has also been observed that in some of the poorest countries, fuelwood accounts for more than 90 per cent of the total energy consumed for all purposes. <#/>Even in oil-rich Nigeria, fuelwood accounts for over 80 per cent of the total national energy consumption.
<#/>World Bank estimates show that fuelwood demand by the year 2000 will call for 19 million hectares of fuelwood plantations—that is, 100 times more than exists in Africa. <#/>In Kenya it is also estimated that more than 65 per cent of the national demand for wood will go unmet by the year 2000 if no major policy affecting the supply/demand configuration is undertaken very soon. <#/>It has been revealed that more than a hundred million people in some 26 countries come within the definition of acute scarcity. <#/>The most serious situations were identified in the arid and semi-arid regions south of the Sahara, the eastern and south-eastern parts of Africa, the mountain areas and islands of Africa and the densely populated areas of Central America and the Caribbean. <#/>The study concluded that nearly 13 million people were cutting firewood more rapidly than it was being renewed.
<#/>It is thus suggested that tree energy is currently threatened by massive and rapid deforestation throughout the Third World. <#/>Studies however show that firewood usage has received very little planning attention. <#/>In Malawi only 15 per cent of the people plant trees for fuelwood and the most popular use is for building. <#/>In Panama, trees are mainly planted to provide fencing while in Central America and Nepal they are planted to provide fodder. <#/>In India trees are grown for the paper mills, while in Costa Rica they are planted as windbreaks. <#/>Thus fuelwood is ranked lower than other needs though farmers expect to obtain fuel, as a by-product, from trees which they have planted for other purposes.
<#/>Wane has argued that it is poverty, inequality and lack of opportunities which are to blame, and until these fundamental problems are tackled, the fuelwood crisis will never be permanently cured. <#/>In other words, the fuelwood problem will not disappear just from planting trees or by improving the design and execution of <-/cookstoves>. <#/>This is because alternative <-/cookstoves> do not necessarily mean availability of and/or accessibility to resources. <#/>In Kakamega, Bradley et al. found that all women said they faced difficulties in obtaining sufficient fuelwood for their daily needs, yet, comparatively, the place had a great quantity of trees on the farms. <#/>This only illustrates the simplicity of solving the fuelwood problem by merely encouraging farmers to plant trees.
<#/>Both legal and cultural ownership and accessibility are responsible for the lack of sustained resources. <#/>Although the environment is potentially equipped with tree resources, these may disappear with time if the socioeconomic conditions at the household level are not favourable. <#/>The variation in time is only slightly affected by the potential availability of trees so that those in well-watered areas may experience delay in scarcity as compared to those in arid regions.
<#/>However, it is impossible to abandon fuelwood for other alternatives because as a renewable resource wood is inexpensive relative to other fuel sources such as petroleum. <#/>The continued price escalation of imported and/or world fossil fuels and the large amount of capital necessary to build hydroelectric and geothermal plants hinder the transition from fuelwood to more efficient and cleaner forms of energy. <#/>Even if these forms of energy were made available, the economic situation at the household level would most likely prevent a majority of the people from investing in the devices necessary for their use. <#/>Data on Kenyan rural households show that when wood is scarce, people tend to divert to the use of agricultural residues rather than purchased energy forms.
<#/>As tree resources are depleted, the conditions of life deteriorate. <#/>If the predictions that the continuing fuelwood demand shows no sign of being reversed is true, then there is every cause for alarm. <#/>This chapter therefore addresses those socio-economic circumstances that make it impossible for the direct consumers of firewood to utilize a given environment profitably. <#/>This is based on the understanding that whatever the ecological conditions, it is ultimately the socio-economic factors that greatly determine or influence the sustainable management of fuel energy at the household level. <#/>To this extent, even the lack of trees is only a symptom of underlying socio-economic factors that tend to promote their absence. <#/>The main objective, therefore, is to isolate those conditions that have favoured movement from adequate provision of domestic fuel energy to an unprecedented fall in the same with specific reference to Bura Irrigation Settlement Scheme, Tana River District.
<#/><h> Site description and methodology </h>
<#/>This study is based on a survey that was carried out in Bura Irrigation Settlement Scheme. <#/>The Bura project is situated about 10° south of the Equator in the very marginal land on the west bank of the lower Tana River basin. <#/>The area has an annual rainfall of 400 mm with temperature ranging from 250 to 290 °C.
<#/>The scheme was established to settle unemployed, underemployed and landless rural families, to increase agricultural production and thereby reduce imports, to stimulate regional development, and to reclaim semi-arid land which previously had been bush and scrubland. <#/>Tenants were recruited from all over Kenya using quotas calculated on the basis of population employment opportunities and agricultural land availability. <#/>Initially women were not to be considered, even if they were heads of households. <#/>However, the selection criteria shifted to include both men and women.
<#/>Tenants started arriving in 1981, and by 1986 nearly 2,000 tenant families had been settled in ten villages, each consisting of 145-242 households. <#/>The mode of tenant house occupation and resultant patterns depended on such factors as block arrival at the scheme and continued adjustment due to intervillage migration.
<#/>Once in Bura, the tenants were issued with a one-year lease renewable annually as long as the performance of the tenant family was accepted. <#/>Therefore the tenants are strictly licensees (Laws of Kenya 1862 Ch. 288), and on arrival, each is made familiar with the irrigation rules and signs an acknowledgement. <#/>The legal framework for management of irrigation schemes in Kenya provides the managers with nearly total control over the labour power of the tenants and their families, the right to enforce discipline, impose fines, confiscate property and cause their imprisonment and expulsion.
<#/>Each farmer has a plot of 1.3 hectares and out of this 0.05 hectares (<ea>/Maendeleo plot) is located separately near the village and is used for vegetable growing for the family. <#/>The remaining 1.25 ha are allocated in two plots of 0.625 ha each, located in different cotton-planting blocks. <#/>The food crops grown include maize, cowpeas and groundnuts. <#/>These are allocated only half the area taken by cotton, and they are grown during the off-season period. <#/>A tenant in Bura is therefore expected to make maximum use of irrigation farming so as to yield an income high enough to repay farm inputs and support the family throughout the year.
<#/>Though the management had proposed that the cleared bush would serve as wood in the initial years of settlements, this disappeared almost immediately. <#/>The present situation indicates that even the unsettled (twelve) villages' cleared bush and vegetation are long gone and the nearest signs of wood are more than 14 kms away from the ten occupied villages. <#/>When the tenants started arriving in 1982 the fuelwood supply was about one kilometre from their homes. <#/>By 1984 they were walking 5.6 kms, one way, to fetch firewood, and in 1985 donkey carts started being used, mainly by the sellers, to fetch firewood. <#/>Meanwhile, a fuelwood plantation project was selected for funding under the Kenya-Finland Technical Co-operation Programme, but work never began until April 1984. <#/>By September 1986 the Finnish International Development Agency (FINNIDA) had sponsored the construction of 309 fuelwood energy conservation stoves.
<#/>The scheme's accounts office was approached and they readily made available the farmers' cotton delivery Progress Report for 1986. <#/>Proportionate stratified random sampling was used to cover each of the ten occupied villages. <#/>A total of 186 questionnaires were administered and the household was the unit of analysis. <#/>The research instrument consisted of a standardized interviewer-administered questionnaire made up of both closed and open-ended questions. <#/>Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present and interpret findings.
<#/><h> At the household level</h> 
<#/>Effects of wood scarcity have been discussed as they relate to soil degradation, reduced rainfall and interrupted ecological balances. <#/>This has largely ignored the relationship of people to wood scarcity. <#/>In Bura, a percentage of firewood is collected by women (41), men (34.3), both (9.7), children (2.2) and labourers (12.8). <#/>Frequency of collection (percentage) is weekly (80.5), twice a week (14.3), thrice a week (2.3) and daily (1.5). <#/>In the search for firewood the tenants walk an average of 12.6 kms and the majority do a total of 16 kms.
<#/>Collecting firewood takes an average of seven hours per day and the majority of the people take 7-9 hours per day. <#/>This agrees with the World Bank report that firewood collecting is consuming more and more time as the scarcity increases. <#/>On the other hand, farmwork is allocated between 8 and 60 hours per week with an average of 53.6 hours. <#/>While farmwork seems to take precedence, it is observed that firewood takes a considerable proportion of the weekly time, considering the fact that it is only a domestic chore. <#/>Domestic chores other than firewood collection take an average of two hours a day. <#/>This observation is similar to Perlov's (1984) finding that among the Samburu, increased time allocation to fuelwood had led to the competition between wood requirements and agricultural production.
<#/>The majority of the tenants (82.3 per cent) buy almost all the firewood they use compared to back home where 91.4 per cent got their firewood from the bush, free of charge. <#/>Increasing commoditization of fuelwood means cutting the poorest segments of the population from access to fuelwood. <#/>In Bura the farmers spend an average of Kshs. 107.70 per month on firewood when it is most scarce and Kshs. 85.60 per month when there is plenty. <#/>The problems experienced by the majority reveal that the fuelwood scarcity has brought about financial problems to an already strained domestic budget. <#/>It was observed that the tenants even engage in borrowing money, much as they are aware of the consequences of having a debt.
<#/>In the tenants' views the fuelwood scarcity has forced them to alter values. <#/>In immediate fuelwood scarcity the farmers (percentage) reported doing without meals (24.7), using lesser forms of energy (31.2) or cooking lighter meals (44.1). <#/>Researchers similarly observed that whenever there is a fuelwood scarcity the poor are forced to use lower forms of energy, alter diets or generally cut down on other needs. <#/>A significant (.05) association was observed between the number of meals cooked per day and what the tenants have to forgo so as to purchase firewood. <#/>The distributions indicated that the scarcity has forced the farmers to forgo hired farm labour, school fees, clothing and/or food purchases-the type of factors that contribute to national development and a better standard of living.
<#/>Domestic energy needs to be sustained through renewed growth, regulated utilization and/or use of alternative fuels. <#/>Whatever the choice, it is a function of economic ability, physical availability and socio-cultural orientation. <#/>There are certain socio-economic factors that constrain the Bura households from sustaining fuelwood supply as a domestic energy resource. <#/>
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W2A033K
<#/><I> <h> Women's role in the supply of fuelwood </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>In the context of women and environment, women's role in the supply of fuelwood as a source of domestic energy is an example of the enormous responsibility shouldered by women on the domestic front, especially in rural areas. <#/>The scarcity of fuelwood supply sources and the distance to trek in searching for it have important consequences on family welfare, agricultural productivity and the immediate environment. <#/>Women carry the burden of fetching fuelwood (in most of the poor rural households in the developing countries) as part of the traditional role of housewife. <#/>Development has taken into account the woman's double role as the paid breadwinner and the unpaid manager of the household.
<#/>Fuelwood as a source of domestic energy
<#/>Energy demands of developing countries are likely to increase by more than 50 per cent in the next six years, thus increasing their share of global demand from 17 to 24 per cent. <#/>Developing countries make substantial use of non-commercial energy sources and the share is expected to decline as nations develop. <#/>The energy sector covers non-commercial primary energy sources (mainly fuelwoods) and commercial energy (petroleum, natural gas, hydroelectricity, coal and some geothermal sources). <#/>Renewables, such as solar energy, could become important especially in the remote inland areas. <#/>Inadequate and unreliable energy supplies have contributed to Africa's slow growth during the past three decades, and the increasing demand for household fuelwoods is leading to chronic deforestation.
<#/>One reason for worrying about deforestation is that it adds to the carbon in the earth's atmosphere. <#/>Growing trees lock up carbon; burning or rotting trees release it. <#/>So most schemes to stop global warming assume that deforestation is halted or reversed. <#/>Population pressure and the need for fuelwood cause deforestation. <#/>Hence the environmental costs need to be taken into account in formulating energy strategies. <#/>Per capita consumption of fuelwood in developing countries is of the order of 1 tonne of wood per year, with an additional 15 per cent being used in cottage industries, manufacturing and service sectors. <#/>Cooking accounts for over 50 per cent of household use; heating is the next most important as a third of the consumption varying according to climatic conditions. <#/>Fuelwood is still probably the premier fuel in terms of actual number of consumers. <#/>As the world's population becomes more prosperous, there will be a switch away from fuelwood, first to charcoal and then to other more convenient non-wood fuels. <#/>Much depends on the relative price (and convenience) of the competing fuels. <#/>However, this substitution does not occur in the subsistence sector unless they have exhausted local supplies of fuelwood, and then they are reduced to burning dung and various items of vegetable matter or moving house to areas better endowed with their basic requirements. <#/>This sector is characterized by shortages.
<#/>Fuelwood is the primary source of energy for almost one-half the world's population. <#/>According to the United Nations, the largest fuelwood producer is India, followed by Brazil, China, Indonesia, the United States and Nigeria. <#/>Most fuelwood is collected on a non-commercial basis for domestic heating and cooking, so it is not usually included in official energy statistics. <#/>In many areas, fuelwood can no longer be thought of as a renewable resource because consumption rates exceed sustainable yields. <#/>In certain locations, chiefly around cities, fuelwood gathering can damage forests. <#/>In the developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, fuelwood accounts for 80 per cent of total energy consumed, and increased consumption could contribute to severe environmental deterioration in some areas. <#/>The situation in parts of Sudan-Saharan and south-eastern regions is already serious and could become critical.
<#/>Women are the major end-users of energy in the Third World. <#/>Institutions such as schools, hospitals, hotels and barracks as well as the industrial and agricultural sectors are also heavily dependent on fuelwoods and cause local scarcities. <#/>Most studies confirm that rural people seldom cut trees for use in their own homes and they are not the cause of rural deforestation. <#/>The impact on health of wood smoke and combustion gases is recognized as a major health problem throughout the Third World.
<#/>Most households depend on fuelwood as their main source of energy. <#/>In places where the threat of desertification is paramount, women have to travel long distances before enough firewood can be gathered for cooking the day's food. <#/>It is a tedious task for mothers to walk long distances with their babies after the household tasks are completed. <#/>The aftermath of such long-distance walks in the tropical heat include waste of precious labour time, dehydration and the subsequent debilitating effects on health. <#/>When firewood has to be purchased, limited income is a real constraint.
<#/>Rural people seldom view fuelwood scarcities in isolation from other household constraints. <#/>From the farmer's perspective, tree planting is not usually the most rational way to respond to fuelwood scarcities. <#/>The demand for fuelwood cannot possibly be met from the sustainable management of existing tree resources. <#/>The conclusion is unavoidable. <#/>If these demands are to be met, vast areas of forested lands must be cleared in the immediate future, or a massive programme of reforestation must be undertaken. <#/>Already more than 50 million Africans face acute scarcity. <#/>Based on present trends, the demand for fuelwoods would triple by 2020. <#/>The rate of consumption of fuelwood greatly exceeds the rate of natural growth in many areas. <#/>Even if tree planting is accelerated, chronic shortages are almost inevitable. <#/>The main reason for the uncontrolled exploitation of the forest cover, apart from land clearing is that in most countries there are no incentives for sound management or optimization of yields.
<#/>Over 60 per cent of total energy demand is met by fuelwood in Kenya; this is expected to grow further due to population pressure and rising cost of fuel substitutes. <#/>The demand for fuelwood will grow by 4 per cent per annum to accommodate additional demand for a cheap energy substitute (fuelwood). <#/>In the absence of any intervention, the 'fuelwood gap' between supply and demand will widen considerably. <#/>In some cases, the fuelwood gap has formed the basis for comprehensive energy policy and planning activities.
<#/>In Kenya, household energy surveys in the late 1970s were used as the basis for a complex computerized energy information model, the Less Developed Countries (LDC) Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP). <#/>The hypothetical policy case which closed the fuelwood gap through different project interventions, described fuelwood planting and tree management activities targeted for around 3.6 million hectares, as well as a range of demand management strategies. <#/>Fuelwood consumption is closely linked to its economic cost, and radical changes in patterns of consumption can be anticipated as cost increases. <#/>Consumption is quite dynamically related to its economic cost and to supply.
<#/>Paul Harrison gives a succinct summary of the fuelwood crisis in Africa <quote_>:
<quote/><#/>In most parts of Africa, fuelwood shortage is the result rather than the cause of deforestation. <#/>But once deforestation has passed a certain threshold, cutting for fuelwood can become a serious threat to the environment. <#/>Many larger towns in the drier regions are surrounded by rings of deforestation spreading out like ripples in a pond. <#/>Once fuelwood supplies disappear altogether, crop residues and even dung are burned instead of being returned to the soil; soil fertility and water-holding capacity decline further.
<#/>The lack of adequate on-farm labour can be an important incentive for farmers to plant trees. <#/>Small holdings headed by very young or very old women face serious labour constraints. <#/>They have an interest in concentrating fodder and fuel resources on or around the farm so they are more accessible to the household. <#/>These kinds of constraints in some areas of Kenya have led to initiatives which have increased the household's access to - fuelwood. <#/>In some areas of Kisii District, fuelwood collection requires a relatively small proportion of the household's time because fuelwood supplies are obtained from planted and managed on-farm trees.
<#/>The most promising approach to reducing demand for fuelwood is to increase the efficiency with which it is used. <#/>Traditional three-stone fires are inefficient. <#/>Most studies suggest that only 5-10 per cent of the calorific value of the wood goes into heating the pot. <#/>Improved stoves can cook the same meal with half of the firewood used by the three-stone fire, with a corresponding reduction in smoke.
<#/>Bellerive Foundation has installed 800 cooking stoves in 300 institutions in Kenya in an effort to alleviate fuel shortage. <#/>The foundation is a Swiss non-profit organization that <-/instals> and maintains the stoves. <#/>Its main concern was planting more trees and production of fuel-efficient cooking stoves. <#/>It established a conservation project conference following the 1981 UN Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy in Nairobi, which called for immediate action in response to the increasingly acute scarcity of firewood. <#/>The organization established tree nurseries, worked with the Forestry Department in planting and conserving trees and in conjunction with the German Special Energy Project (GTZ) and KANU <ea/>Maendeleo <ea/>ya <ea/>Wanawake Organization introduced domestic stoves in Taita Taveta, Embu, Nakuru, Meru and Isiolo.
<#/>The World Commission on Environment and Development notes the key elements of sustainability that have to be reconciled as sufficient growth of energy supplies to meet human needs (which means accommodating a minimum of 3 per cent per capita income growth in developing countries), energy efficiency and conservation measures, public health protection of the biosphere and prevention of more localized forms of pollution.
<#/><h> Critical position of women </h>
<#/>By tradition, women manage the household affairs in developing countries. <#/>Although the occupational specificity of female work varies from society to society depending on the peculiar socio-economic features, there is no lack of consensus on the overburdened nature of a female worker's daily chores. <#/>These include unpaid domestic work and paid outside work which is an economic necessity. <#/>According to Grown and Sebstad, women around the world perform the lowest paid activities and are concentrated in low-end jobs and occupations. <#/>The poorer the household, the more time women devote to working in low return activities. <#/>But earning income represents only one component of women's overall economic activity. <#/>Women are also responsible for providing for most of their families' needs, whether from subsistence agriculture, unpaid work in a family enterprise or household work which includes fetching fuelwood and water, child care, cooking, cleaning and sewing. <#/>These domestic duties and other unpaid activities often total 60 hours per week and exceed the time women spend in paid work. <#/>This point is further elaborated by Grown and Sebstad, <quote/>.
<#/>Neglecting women's work as food producers, providers and managers is not only detrimental to women, it also makes it impossible to develop the integrated approaches to the interlinked problems of food-fuel-water that are increasingly being recognized as essential to the success of policy. <#/>Collection and head carrying of firewood, tending cooking fires and other domestic chores will be more tedious as fuelwood becomes more scarce due to distance and availability of labour time. <#/>Poor women are the worst sufferers from their environment degradation because their environment is their - means of livelihood. <#/>Over-exploitation of resources in the form of permanent cultivation over and over without improving the soil, overgrazing and fuelwood extraction constitute the prime reasons for environmental degradation. <#/>Population pressure is the catalyst, thus deepening poverty of women and female-headed households.
<#/>Land degradation is a threat to the poor. <#/>The African woman who collects firewood in the forest to cook a simple meal for her family is behaving rationally in her individual context. <#/>She is causing desertification out of necessity, not out of choice. <#/>It would be outrageous if powerful countries, for fear of climatic changes in their own countries, simply force her to stop cooking food in the only way available to her today. <#/>The role of richer countries must be to help provide her with a choice to use other affordable energy sources for her cooking. <#/>Solving the environmental problems in poor countries entails a broad agenda for development co-operation.
<#/>Recognizing the important role played by African women in agroforestry, animal husbandry, water supply and energy management, the African Women's Assembly considered the following issues to be of particular significance:
<ea/><-/</I>
 
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<#/><I> <h> I. <#/>INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>Although conditions of 'development', in the sense of growth and improvement in quality, exist in relation to many phenomena and for all places, their significance is most markedly felt in new nations. <#/>These nations are involved in endeavours aimed at consolidating their nationhood (through political and constitutional action), enhancing their material self‑sufficiency (through economic improvement), promoting and stabilising their communal advantages and harmony of living (through social policy and programmes), and refining and perfecting their arts and other cultural phenomena.
<#/>Development in such nations primarily addresses itself to: the realisation of political integrity, as a basis for civil harmony and international credibility; the enhancement of economic well‑being, for the individual, the family and the nation; the improvement of social life in such vital spheres as environmental safety, health, education and recreation; and the perfection of cultural life, in such fields as arts, scholarship, mannerism, etc.
<#/>These various elements in the development agenda are functionally intertwined, and it may well be that none of them trumps the others. <#/>But it is arguable that the entire range of them form a constellation around the economic and social phenomena, which lie at the inner core of the developmental set‑up, in the human agenda.
<#/>This rule of thumb sets the pattern of this paper: to address the more material aspect of development, and with reference to the increasingly important concept of 'sustainable development'. <#/>The status review on the current environmental crisis, which follows, will show that <-/developoment>, as it is understood in common practice, is reaching its limits. <#/>And if life is to continue as a gift of nature, then those limits must be overcome. <#/>It is now recognised that the ideal framework for dealing with such matters of destiny is that given by the principle of sustainable development. <#/>This, as will be seen, is a broad concept whose practical utility cannot be taken for granted; it remains to conceive simple, workable formulae which can be translated into the day‑to‑day activities in the individual nations. <#/>This paper hopes to make its contribution by addressing the question: What is the place of property doctrine in the goals of sustainable development, and in what manner does such doctrine inhibit or facilitate overall socio‑economic development?
<#/><h> II. THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS: A STATUS REVIEW </h>
<#/>The concept of sustainable development is most elaborately developed in the World Commission on Environment and Development's (WCED) well‑known report, Our Common Future, which defines it as: 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. <#/>It has also been defined as: 'improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting systems'.
<#/>Human endeavours in economic development are now recognized to be leading straight into the grips of diverse, grave consequences, affecting the viability of natural resources and the integrity of the ecosystem. <#/>These, in summary, are: (i) situations occasioned by air pollution ‑‑ the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer; (ii) consequences related to the depletion of damage to the bio‑resources ‑‑ deforestation, desertification, water depletion, species extinction; (iii) consequences associated with the continual poisoning of land and water, by pesticides, herbicides and toxic wastes; and (iv) conditions flowing from deleterious effects of noise pollution.
<#/>In greenhouse, effect, certain gases fail to clear out of the atmosphere by seeping into the natural carbon sinks; they linger around and trap the sun's heat, thus subjecting the earth to an undue amount of warmth. <#/>The human sources which generate these emissions have exceeded the capacity of the sinks to absorb the greenhouse gases. <#/>The effect of the global warming is that it 'will involve changes in precipitation and wind patterns, changes in the frequency and intensity of storms, ecosystem stress and species loss, reduced availability of fresh water, and a rising global mean sea level'.
<#/>Acid rain results when water falls from the clouds, and in the process mixes with polluting substances generated from burning fossil fuels, used in power stations and factories, or from vehicular emissions. <#/>The mixture forms dilute sulphuric and nitric acids, which then fall as rain. <#/>Such rain will kill aquatic life, and corrode buildings and cultural artifacts. <#/>It will also cause damage to forests and crops, and in other ways threaten human health.
<#/>The ozonosphere, which is made up of supercharged oxygen (03), forms a protective layer against the deleterious effects on human life, of the direct rays of the sun. <#/>It has been established that the ozone layer is gradually getting depleted by the effect of chlorofluorocarbons, which are generated by man's industrial and related activities. <#/>Although in 1987 the United Nations adopted the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, as a 'global risk management treaty' that called for a freeze in the production of the controlled chlorofluorocarbons, at their 1986 levels, intensified industrial activity within individual states has continued to advance the damage. <#/>While the main culprits remain the industrialised countries of the North, the sustained attempts at increased industrial production in the developing countries is destined to bring these countries, someday, to the big league of ozone layer depleters. <#/>The overall depletion achieved, will seriously undermine the health status of all mankind.
<#/>Under the head 'damage to bio‑resources', deforestation immediately comes to mind. <#/>About 10,000 years ago there were some 6.2 billion hectares of forest. <#/>Deforestation has since then taken place on a large scale, and particularly in the North; and today only some 4 billion hectares of forested land are left. <#/>Half of these are in the temperate lands, and half in the tropics. <#/>A special feature about the tropical forests, which raises much concern about them, is that they have an immense concentration of biological diversity ‑‑ which is particularly important for biotechnology and for medical science. <#/>But deforestation in the tropics is taking place at the exceptional rate of 17 million hectares per year. <#/>Not only does this compromise the fundamental role of these forests in the ecological cycle ‑- with resultant climate change ‑‑ but the process of destruction is leading to the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- with accelerative effect on climate change, and consequent disruptive impact on the ecosystem.
<#/> Great deal of Africa's forests is just cleared for direct sale to the North ‑‑ as raw material. <#/>Blame has been ascribed to African states, by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), 'for exporting most of its wood as logs which tends to encourage reckless exploitation of the tropical forests'. <#/>The failing of these states is seen to be their failure to develop or acquire the technology to process logs, to enable them to export only the secondary product; this would give them wider policy‑scope in the management and conservation of their primary forest resources.
<#/>Desertification is attendant on deforestation. <#/>This would be true especially in semi‑arid areas. <#/>The fate of Lake Chad may be taken as a case in point. <#/>This lake and its basin extend into Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger. <#/>The lake and its basin are shrinking and deteriorating into desert. <#/>The surface area of the lake waters has diminished from 28,000 sq. k.m. to a mere 10,000 sq. k.m. <#/>This grim trend may be set down to 'prolonged droughts that have occurred during the last three decades, erosion of alluvial soils, wind erosion including deposition of sand and formation of sand barriers'.
<#/>Forest cover stabilises soils, soil hydrology and the nourishment ‑ interplay between the soil and the vegetation. <#/>The ecosystem is disrupted and damaged, once the vegetation cover is removed, and the resultant deterioration, especially in semi‑arid lands, rapidly attracts desertification.
<#/>Inseparably linked to deforestation are the phenomena of water depletion and species extinction. <#/>Destruction of forest cover breaks the water cycle from the soil, through the organic process in plants, to the atmospheric moisture content, and back to the soil in the form of precipitation. <#/>This changes the climate, and the return of water into the soil through regular rainfall patterns is disrupted and halted. <#/>The effect is to deprive the soil of water, with grave consequences for human and animal requirements.
<#/>The same forests provide favourable conditions for diversity in animal and plant life ‑‑ and their destruction leads to the decimation of fauna and flora species. <#/>As UNEP's State of the World Environment states: <quote_><quote/>.
<#/>The environmental crisis also takes the form of soil and water poisoning, by way of pesticides, herbicides and toxic wastes. <#/>The use or handling of such chemicals and wastes immediately lodges poisonous ingredients in the soil ‑‑ even though man is then labouring under the assumption that he is thereby enhancing economic productivity. <#/>True, such chemicals may, for a time, lead to larger quantities of agricultural yields than would otherwise be realised. <#/>But in time, they will poison the soils, yields may fall, and the practice of agriculture may altogether be discontinued ‑‑ unless new technology brings forth a method of treatment and restoration. <#/>Much worse, such chemicals are likely to find their way into both underground water, and runoff, as well as to seep into man's food chain, through plant uptake. <#/>In this way, the chemicals will constitute a health hazard and diminish man's good social life. <#/>The toxic substances which end up in the water courses may also pollute potable water for man and other animals.
<#/>Illustration is found in a recent study entitled 'The Impact of Pollution on the Ecology of Nairobi‑Athi River System in Kenya'. <#/>The authors found as follows: <quote_><quote/>
<#/>UNEP's report on the State of the World Environment (1989) makes it clear that 'Virtually all industrial activity generates waste, which is discarded because it has no further use'. <#/>But much of this waste is hazardous waste, i.e. <quote_><quote/>. <#/>The general inability of national agencies to neutralise such wastes and dispose of them safely has already led to a great deal of concern at international forums of policy and law‑making. <#/>(It is to be hoped that this moral pressure will elicit the co‑operation of individual states, in safeguarding soil and water against unmindful disposal of toxic substances emanating from industrial and related enterprises).
<#/>In the same way chemical pollutants cause degeneration in the air, and in the soil and water, affecting the normal life cycle, noise depending on its intensity, rocks the stability of physical structures dwellings and cultural artifacts, and disrupts the healthful life of man and other animals. <#/>The effects may be classified as environmental pollution, insofar as their impact is on the soil, vegetation and air, and the living organisms in those quarters are disrupted in their normal existence, so that they can no longer live a normal life cycle.
<#/>Derek Roebuck, in graphic illustration of the effect of noise pollution (which is a direct incident of activities designed to bring economic progress), recounts the grim Japanese experience with aircraft and locomotive activity. <#/>Of Osaka International Airport, he writes: <quote_><-/<quote/>.<#/>The foregoing examples suffice to show the limits of popular notions of economic and social development. <#/>Most of the current development strategy is founded on some crude faith in exploitation of materials, <-/consumptionism>, and casting away of used reagents, catalysts and wastes. <#/>But this at once exposes the sensitivities and frailties of the natural resources themselves, and of the entire ecosystem. <#/>Those processes, which give only a short‑term human satisfaction, objectively seen, appear as intrusions in the normal course of nature ‑‑ of which man is part. <#/>But his desires have taken the form of <-/artificialities> that are sharply contradictory to the order of nature. <#/>Moreover, it is the immediate goals of consumption and short‑term comfort, that seem to be the preoccupation of man's governing and social‑management institutions ‑‑ the political and constitutional order, the public policies and laws in force. <#/>In the quest for the essential fundamental change, the character and activities of such major institutions must be addressed. <#/>They have been addressed, indirectly, through international organisations (such as UNEP) which relate to the activities of sovereign states; but the relevant communications carry no unfailing authority, and to give them actual validity, it seems the individual states must be accorded the information base, and the practical support, which will lead them, of their own volition, to modify their domestic policy and legal arrangements.
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<#/><I> <h> Social justice or development? <#/>The puzzle of basic needs in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>In Kenya, the preoccupation with providing for basic needs and concern over the issues of development and social justice have become more pronounced with time. <#/>The frequency with which these issues are referred to and sometimes debated upon by all kinds of people bears testimony to this concern. <#/>The daily press hardly misses stories or letters from readers expressing their feelings about some perceived inequities; marginalization of certain categories of people and the perennial problem of survival. <#/>There can be no doubt that these issues and concerns will become more critical as the country continues to grow.
<#/>The three concepts involved namely basic needs, social justice and development are very powerful concepts that have probably, as a result of that fact, acquired different definitions in the minds of many different people. <#/>It therefore seems imperative that before embarking on a discussion of this nature, some definitions of these concepts as will be used in this paper be set <-/>set out.
<#/><h> THREE CONCEPTS </h>
<#/><h> a) Development </h>
<#/>Of the three concepts, development is arguably the most powerful and has been a major preoccupation of some of the greatest minds of this century. <#/>In the Third World especially, its allure continues to grow as these countries aspire to attain a condition of 'development'.
<#/>One intellectual fallacy that seems to have marred much development thinking in our time is the conception of development as the development of things, systems, and structures rather than the development of man and human beings everywhere. <#/>While systems and structures must almost inevitably change in the process of development, they are at most only the means of
Things ‑ Anything that is produced
Systems ‑ Systems of distribution
Structures ‑ Whole set of interacting relations and multilateral to be found in any society
<#/>achieving development. <#/>The real test of whether development has taken place or not must in the end be found in what it has done to human beings and not what things, systems and structures have been created.
<#/>If development is meant for people, and no one seems to dispute this, then it must be people who have to give it its sociological meaning. <#/>As a result, development will only be meaningful if it results in the improvement of the quality of life of at least the majority if not all of the people in a society. <#/>Assessment of the quality of life must therefore focus on those indicators that have a bearing on improving living conditions such as increasing income levels and its distribution in a society, quality and access to public utilities, consumption patterns and others, in such a way that as an increasing number of population experience an improvement in their lives as apply to these indicators, then we can say a process of development is taking place. <#/>Whereas there is no limit theoretically to this process in practice when the majority or all of a population enjoys a high quality of life as exemplified by their status <-/viz‑a‑vis> these indicators, then we may say that a society or country is developed.
<#/><h> b) Basic Needs </h>
<#/>According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a <-/hierachy> of prepotency which means that the most prepotent goal will monopolise consciousness and will tend of itself to organize the recruitment of the various capacities of the organism. <#/>He list five sets of basic needs in the order of their priority: physiological needs, safety, love, esteem and self‑actualisation.
<#/>Of these sets of needs, this paper will focus solely on the first set namely the physiological and more specifically on food. <#/>The main reason for this is that of all the physical needs, it is perhaps the most critical in that consciousness is almost completely pre‑empted by hunger which is the lack of food. <#/>A person who is hungry or starving is in no position to meet any of his other needs or to participate in activities that are useful to himself or his community. <#/>Such a person's contribution to the development process is nil since all his thoughts and physical efforts will be geared towards satisfying his hunger for food before he can do anything else.
<#/><h> c) Social Justice </h>
<#/>Justice as a concept may be regarded as a criterion by which good laws of a society are evaluated. <#/>As a principle it may be regarded as treating equals equally and unequals unequally in proportion to their inequality. <#/>According to one author, in its full generality, the concept of justice embraces three elements and is applicable to all situations where these elements are found together. <#/>The first is other directedness. <#/>Justice is inter‑subjective and has to do with inter‑personal relationships. <#/>The second element is the concept of duty, or of what is owed or what is a person's 'own' by right or his due. <#/>The third element we can call the concept of equity, proportionality, equilibrium or balance.
<#/>While cummutative justice is a matter of redress and requires equivalent exchange proceeding from arithmetical equality, distributive justice according to Aristotle covers 'those things that are divided among the members of the body politic'. <#/>These include honour, wealth, food, shelter and other things. <#/>Thus cummutative standards <-/ofjustice> may be viewed as being derivative rather than primary. <#/>This must be so because it would be difficult to discuss justice in exchange without consideration of its distributive context.
<#/>Social justice therefore has to do with no less than the distributive aspects of the legal rules of a society. <#/>In other words, while legal justice is concerned with conforming to the rules whatever those rules may be, social justice is about the distributive qualities of those rules. <#/>Judgements about social justice try to confirm whether existing rules distribute burdens and benefits justly among the members of a community. <#/>However, since in practice, considerations of social justice are sometimes infused into legal justice, the two are neither mutually exclusive nor necessarily correlated; they apply to different phases of the social process. <#/>So while legal justice may be viewed as describing the work done by a judge, social justice may be seen as describing the work done by a legislator.
<#/>According to Sadurski, the principle of justice is a generalization based on particular moral convictions that are applied to those cases that call for a just arrangement. <#/>This general principle can be formulated as follows; whenever an ideal, hypothetical balance of social benefits and burdens is upset, social justice calls for restoring it.
<#/>This initial and hypothetical equilibrium as proposed by Sadurski has several characteristics. <#/>The first is a social condition characterised by mutual abstention, by mutual respect of liberties. <#/>In respecting other persons' sphere of autonomy, all enjoy equally the benefits of autonomy and the burdens of self‑restraint.
<#/>The second characteristic is the equal satisfaction for all persons of basic material conditions of meaningful life: no one suffers burdens which make his subsistence or <-/pariticipation> in community life impossible. <#/>This does not mean that everyone has equal conditions of life but rather that no one is excluded from the possibility of having a meaningful and decent life as measured by the general standards of his or her society. <#/>The possible forms of denial of means of meaningful life do not necessarily involve positive action by someone but include also failure to provide some essentials such as food.
<#/>The third characteristic is that everyone's work, effort, action and sacrifice yields a benefit equivalent to the contribution; in other words, that a person's 'outcomes' are equal to his 'inputs'. <#/>Persons who do more for others than they take from them should be rewarded for this difference; extra benefits restore equilibrium which has been upset by an extra effort. <#/>In a complex social exchange one can hardly talk about 'equality' of inputs and outcomes because they are usually incommensurate. <#/>Equilibrium is achieved when the overall level is equal for all people, that is, when the ratio of one person's outcomes to inputs is equal to <-_other><+_another> <-_persons><person’s> outcome/input ratio.
<#/>There are three methods of restoring the balance in this hypothetical equilibrium. <#/>The method of restoring the first balance of mutual non‑harm is punishment. <#/>Distribution aimed at the satisfaction of basic needs is a way of restoring social equilibrium in its second aspect, while distribution according to desert is the proper method for restoring the overall balance of inputs and benefits, that is, the third aspect of equilibrium.
<#/>Of these, the second and third are of direct relevance to this discussion, the third in that it raises the very important issue on how society rewards effort by giving one the means to live, the second because it enables us to assess the status of social equilibrium by examining the distribution of any basic need such as food in a society.
<#/><h> d) A Brief Synthesis </h>
<#/>Food occupies a very central position in human existence. <#/>To the extent that one cannot get food for any reason, his very existence and survival are at stake. <#/>If one is in a position to satisfy this need and avoid hunger, he is then in a position to pursue his other basic needs be they physiological needs, safety needs, love, esteem or self‑actualisation. <#/>The aim of pursuing these needs is to improve his quality of life. <#/>If man is the object of the development process, then the improvement of his quality of life in all possible ways must be the emphasis. <#/>If for any reason his access to food is denied or is inadequate, then all his efforts to improve his quality of life by pursuing his needs is hampered and both his survival and ability to develop personally and socially is threatened.
<#/>In order to avoid such unpleasant possibilities it is necessary that there be a measure of guarantee for everyone's access to food. <#/>The questions to be asked in any situation of deprivation will inevitably be what kinds of distributive mechanisms exist and what may have happened to make them produce such an undesirable result. <#/>This is because social justice emphasises distribution. <#/>However once that distributive quality is lacking, then not everyone has the opportunity to engage in an activity that enables their efforts to be rewarded. <#/>Following from that, they are unable to satisfy the basic material conditions for a meaningful life. <#/>In such a situation, there would be a worsening of hunger, poverty, ignorance, disease, all factors bearing on man's quality of life with a definite negative effect on development.
<#/>While the foregoing would seem to indicate that development can only exist in a situation where social justice exists or vice‑versa, the title of this paper seems to suggest otherwise. <#/>Before discussing whether development and social justice are mutually exclusive or not, it is appropriate to briefly mention some of the facts which are relevant to the food issue in Kenya today.
<#/><h> THE STATUS OF FOOD IN KENYA </h>
<#/><h> a) An Overview </h>
<#/>In the mid‑1970's a global survey conducted by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) asked respondents whether there had been a time during the previous year when they did not have enough money to buy food. <#/>A significant number of people said ' yes'. <#/>Over 70% of Africans south of the Sahara answered 'yes' 66% in India, 42% in Mexico, 15% in Italy, 14% in Japan and USA. <#/>Given the fact that by 1980, food production per capita was 22% lower than in 1960, with the high population growth rate experienced in Africa since the 1970's one may fairly say that the proportion of sub-Saharan Africans who would answer 'yes' to this question today must have increased.
<#/>Agriculture is the largest industry in Kenya as in most other African countries and therefore national rates of growth and development are determined more by it than any other factor. <#/>Kenya, again as many other countries, experiences its share of drought and the resultant food shortages that have seen not only movement of grain and other foods by the government as famine relief, but importation of food from USA and other countries.
<-/</I>
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<#/><I> <h> Policy impacts on women and environment </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>The global and continental assessments and predictions of the situation of the environment for the last decade of the 20th century are as alarming as they are real. <#/>The 1990s will therefore be a critical decade for arresting and reversing the current trend of environmental degradation. <#/>The World Bank has suggested that no time should be lost in putting in place, country by country, environmental action plans and in mobilizing broadly based population support for their effective implementation.
<#/>Environment here encompasses both the natural and human (social) environment. <#/>The natural environment (of rivers, lakes, forests, wildlife) interacts with the human environment of people and their creations to form the tota1 environment. <#/>In this interaction, human beings have throughout history striven to control the natural environment in order to serve their needs at any given period. <#/>It is in this context that governments design environmental policies aimed at ensuring that the natural environment serves the needs of society, while on the other hand ensuring that the latter does not destroy the former in the process.
<#/>Effective control of the environment requires well designed policies and infrastructure to facilitate the implementation of policies. <#/>Towards this end the state, as the most supreme institution in any given society, is best placed to mobilize the necessary resources to design and ensure the implementation of national environmental policies. <#/>And in designing a national environment policy the underlying guideline should be that sustainable national development depends on the country's natural and human resources and how well they are managed and harmonized. <#/>This in turn reflects on the existing national policies and the level of public awareness of the need to conserve the natural resource environment.
<#/>The public should therefore be aware of the close dependence between their human and natural environment, that proper management of natural resources and conservation of the environment promotes opportunities for improved public health, nutrition, shelter, employment and generation of national wealth. <#/>The success of any programme (environmental or otherwise) largely depends on the target groups that are expected to participate and benefit from such a programme. <#/>How well those target groups participate in the implementation, how well their problems and the total environment of implementation is understood and incorporated in policy planning, largely determines the outcome of this effort. <#/>If women as a major target group in the implementation of environmental programmes are not adequately addressed in policy planning, the environment effort is unlikely to succeed.
<#/><h> Environment policy in Kenya </h>
<#/>In Kenya, the need to conserve the natural environment was recognized by the post-colonial government quite early after independence. <#/>This was reflected in Sessional paper no. 10 of 1965, 'African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya', which set the basis for national planning in subsequent years. <#/>The paper summarized the government's environment policy position as follows. <#/><quote_><quote/>.<#/>Despite this policy statement of intent, environmental issues were not placed high on the government's agenda during the 1960s. <#/>The government was preoccupied with the consolidation of the newly acquired political power and with promoting growth and stability of the economy. <#/>The government instituted measures to intensify export crop production and import substitution. <#/>These measures had major negative effects on the environment, and despite the government's promotion and reliance on the tourist industry as the second major foreign exchange earner after coffee and tea, environmental issues maintained a back seat during the 1960s.
<#/>Towards the end of the 1960s, however, several factors combined to force the Kenya government to move away from rhetoric to more forthright action in regard to environmental management. <#/>For one, the government had come to realize that any long-term sustainable growth of its two major foreign exchange earners—cash crops and tourism—was highly dependent on good environmental management. <#/>Secondly, the effects of environmental degradation that had begun in the colonial era were becoming more manifest with increased population and rapid expansion in agricultural land use and deforestation. <#/>Thus, the need for more concerted efforts in soil and water conservation and afforestation became urgent. <#/><-/Futhermore>, issues of environmental management had by then become of major global concern and were being discussed in various international forums.
<#/>Thus in April 1971, the Kenya government set up an ad hoc Working Committee on Human Environment to review knowledge of the environment and conservation requirements of Kenya. <#/>The report arising from the work of this Committee was presented to the United Nations Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm, in 1972, and may have contributed to the decision by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1972 to locate the newly created United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. <#/>This was followed by a similar <-/siting> in Nairobi of the Environment Liaison Centre International (ELCI) in 1975 and the UN Centre on Human Settlements in 1978. <#/>The Kenya government responded to these sittings by setting up, within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a Liaison Unit on environmental matters. <#/>The increased government concern over environmental conservation management was reflected in the 1974-1978 Development Plan, which stated: 
<#/>The Government recognises the conservation of the environment is becoming increasingly important as the growth of population and the impact of development and technology bear on the capacity of the environment to sustain the use being made of it. <#/>The Government will therefore increase its conservation activities and, whenever possible, restore damaged environments. <#/>Initially this will involve enforcement of present conservation legislation, but in the long run, education to create a conservation minded population is the only lasting solution.
<#/>The <-/legislations> which were enforced by the 1974-78 Development Plan related to conservation of soil, water, wildlife, fish resources, national parks and control of grass fires, industrial pollution, maritime oil pollution, water apportionment and pesticides.
<#/>In addition to the emphasis placed on implementing existing environmental programmes and <-/legislations>, the plan also emphasized the need to identify environmental problems, suggest conservation measures and evaluate the impact on the social environment of conservation programmes.
<#/>By the mid-1980s, the major environment problems had been identified and some public awareness on environmental issues had been created. <#/>Additional institutions and programmes had been created to cope with the rising degradation of the environment. <#/>Among these were the National Environment Secretariat (NES), as a co-ordinating department operating within the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. <#/>It was created to implement government policy, facilitate environmental research and education and promote environmental health. <#/>One of the appointed tasks of NES was to facilitate a review of the existing laws to provide information leading to the presentation of a comprehensive Environment Bill to Parliament. <#/>Other environmental institutions are the Presidential Commission and the National Tree-Planting Fund. <#/>Environmental education is also becoming institutionalized within the normal school curriculum at all levels, including university. <#/>At Moi University, for example, a school of environmental studies has been established to provide advanced environmental education, a forum for research deliberations and action on the environment by the professionals and society at large. <#/>In 1989 the government established another ministry <-/focussing> largely on environment management—the Ministry of Reclamation and Development of Arid, Semi-arid and Wastelands.
<#/>By 1989, therefore, many <-/legislations> and environment institutions were in existence and public awareness of environmental issues had also increased. <#/>And yet environmental degradation remained a serious problem. <#/>Juma observes in this regard that <quote_><quote/>.<#/>Thus the 1989-1993 Development Plan reflects this <-/dissolutionment> with past environment conservation efforts. <#/>In particular the plan expresses the view that 'In the past, economic analyses of development activities have often ignored the social costs leading to uncontrolled environmental degradation'. <#/>In other words, despite past policy rhetoric on the need to conserve the environment the praxis has been that short-term individual, state and corporate economic gains have taken precedence over genuine environmental considerations.
<#/>As environmental degradation continues, Kenya, like many countries of the world, has also been undergoing an economic crisis that has led to government cutbacks on many social and economic programmes that previously used to be financed or subsidized by the government. <#/>Such programmes are in the area of health, education and environment. <#/>In regard to the latter, Kiriro and Juma note that 'numerous conservation programmes planned in the mid- 1980s have not been implemented due to lack of funds. <#/>In addition, conservation activities that were previously undertaken by local authorities on behalf of the central government are threatened as a result of financial difficulties'. <#/>Indeed the 1984-88 Development Plan already stated quite clearly that 'since the economic environment during the Plan period will be characterised by shortages of financial resources, resources will not be available on a large enough scale to rehabilitate areas that have already suffered damage'.
<#/>The dilemma that now faces Kenya in a situation of economic and environmental crisis is how to reshape the environmental agenda to meet the rapidly rising human needs while at the same time arresting the current trend of environmental degradation. <#/>In other words the major policy issue is how to achieve sustainable development without further environmental degradation. <#/>The current plan expresses this dilemma as follows <quote_><quote/>.<#/>As a demonstration of how seriously the government is now taking the issue of environmental degradation, the 1989-1993 plan devoted some 30 pages to discussing sound environment management consistent with growth requirements.
<#/>Kenya has come a long way since 1985 on matters of environment, as demonstrated by policy developments, creation of institutions and programmes and the increased sensitization and mobilization of the public These positive developments notwithstanding, Kenya is still grappling with even more complex problems which demand new solutions and alternative strategies. <#/>The seriousness of environmental problems in the late 1980s in part arises from past mistakes made in policy planning which failed to fully integrate environmental considerations in the total or sectoral development plans. <#/>Most importantly, it arises from policy planning that failed to address the major target group in environmental planning and implementation—the women of Kenya.
<#/><h> Women and the environment </h>
<#/>There are many important reasons why women are so central to environmental conservation and management. <#/>Firstly, Kenyan women, both individually and in groups, have historically tended to be more active in self-help community initiatives than men. <#/>In many self-help rural projects, including environmental conservation, many of the active participants are women. <#/>This reality has been confirmed by many studies, including those conducted in Kitui District, where 95 per cent of the <ea/>mwethya group participants in water and soil conservation projects were women. <#/>Men who had not migrated to urban areas were found to participate mainly in those projects where they were paid a wage.
<#/>Secondly, women in Kenya contribute the greatest amount of the necessary resources for society's subsistence and national economic growth. <#/>Needless to say, agriculture is the mainstay of the Kenyan economy, and women are the major food producers both for subsistence and for marketing. <#/>Kenya cannot therefore afford any environmental degradation that negatively affects food productivity. <#/>And yet degradation has been allowed to occur in the food sector. <#/>Development policies have tended to favour the male-dominated non-food cash-crop sector, with most of the agricultural inputs, extension services and credit being directed to this sector. <#/>With increasing soil degradation poor rural women and their families have become impoverished as they now have to buy much of the food they previously used to produce for themselves. <#/>In this connection, national current estimates show that about 64 per cent of the total expenditure of smallholders is devoted to purchasing food and non-alcoholic beverages.
<#/>The goal of national food self-sufficiency can never be attained unless the government begins to restructure policies and development plans in a manner that places women at the centre of agricultural productivity and environmental conservation. <#/>In other words, the food question cannot be separated from the environmental question. <#/>Even global predictions show that there is an increasing global food scarcity occurring alongside an increasing environmental deterioration.
<#/>In addition to the centrality of women in food and other agricultural production, women are also the custodians of the family health environment. <#/>They are the nutritionists, the nurses, the maintainers of domestic hygiene. <#/>Women are also the educational trainers of the young, as well as the energy and shelter providers. </I>
W2A037K
<#/><I> <h> Sustainable development and economic policy in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Africa has in recent years been a subject of intensive economic and ecological studies conducted by local and international researchers. <#/>Numerous methods have been used in the studies, and the divergence in approaches has in some cases made it difficult for policy makers to identify suitable policy options. <#/>These studies have been prompted by the deepening economic and ecological crises, as partially manifested in widespread famine across the continent. <#/>Some of these problems are manifested in sporadic famines and ecological degradation. <#/>Concern over environmental issues has in recent years been given renewed impetus by the growing awareness that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere will lead to higher average temperatures that will alter the current patterns of the distribution of biological resources as well as economic activity in many countries.
<#/>Most of the studies produced on Africa tend to present a gloomy picture. <#/>A few studies, however, are starting to focus on ways in which the continent can find new directions and raise the social conditions of its population to new levels of human welfare. <#/>In addition to general economic questions, the future of the African environment is also starting to be debated seriously at various forums, especially its linkages with the development process. <#/>Some of the concerns are reflected in the findings and recommendations of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. <#/>The WCED was set up by the UN General Assembly in 1983 to re-examine the critical environment and development problems, formulate realistic proposals to solve them and ensure that human progress can be sustained through development without undermining the environment. <#/>The world is now preparing to discuss a comprehensive agenda for action at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development to be held in Brazil in 1992.
<#/>The Brundtland Report has put down a number of crucial recommendations which need to be implemented so as to achieve sustainable economic growth over the long-run. <#/>What is important at the moment is to examine the main factors which will limit the implementation of the recommendations. <#/>The report itself envisages some fundamental changes in the current institutional organization at the local, national and international levels in order to achieve sustainable development.
<#/>What seems to be crucial, however, is that there are clear differences between the report's findings, which have a long-term orientation, and some of the dominant policies that guide resource utilization and economic development in Africa. <#/>These differences are not simply institutional; they reflect fundamental epistemological divergences in the way different schools of thought view the world. <#/>Amid these debates, African leaders are calling for urgent measures to reduce the rate of environmental degradation and raise the living standards.
<#/>One of the main problems, however, is that there is no systematic collection of information on natural resource management available in the African countries. <#/>The aim of this chapter is to present a partial status review which will indicate the kinds of issues that Kenya should research in order to maintain systematic information collection. <#/>The chapter therefore presents the basis of a long-term research agenda which reflects the relationships between natural resource management and economic policy in the context of the notions of sustainable development presented in the Brundtland report.
<#/><h> Economic policies and environment </h>
<#/>One of the most significant changes in public awareness in recent years has been the growing realization that long-term economic development is dependent on maintaining the integrity of the environment. <#/>Environmental issues were for a long time discussed mainly by those trained in certain fields. <#/>The situation has changed; these issues have now been brought to the mainstream of politics, especially following the personal involvement of President Daniel arap Moi in conservation activities.
<#/>The rapid growth in environmental awareness in Kenya has by far outstripped the capacity of existing economic theories to integrate environmental considerations into the planning process and national accounts. <#/>Prospects for long-term growth are now viewed as being dependent to a large measure on effective environmental management. <#/>This is important for countries such as Kenya, which are dependent on the natural resource base for most economic activities. <#/>Kenya's economic fortunes rely on the ability of its natural resource base to support the agricultural products necessary for local use and export.
<#/>The country depends on a small section of its land for most of its agricultural production. <#/>Only about 17-18 per cent of the land is arable, the rest being arid or semi-arid. <#/>This arable land supports nearly all the major cash crops, 80 percent of the population and most of the indigenous forests. <#/>Kenya has recently created the Ministry of Reclamation and Development of Arid, Semi-arid Areas and Wastelands which focuses on rehabilitating the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). <#/>The ecological basis for Kenya's economy is delicate and requires careful management. <#/>In this respect, the integration of environmental considerations into development strategies is a crucial matter of national welfare and long-term survival. <#/>Policies which do not take such considerations seriously are likely to lead to environmental degradation and possible reductions in economic output. <#/>Such factors may have negative social and political effects. <#/>It is in this respect that the issue of natural resource management should be viewed in the context of long-term national security.
<#/>The challenge facing Kenya is how well environmental considerations are likely to be integrated into macro-economic policies and development plans. <#/>Such efforts would be part of the changing perceptions on the links between environment and development. <#/>International response to environmental problems represents a major step in the growth of public awareness. <#/>What started as a movement of concerned citizens in a few countries in the early 1960s has become a major aspect of current attempts to change the global patterns of development and lifestyles. <#/>Much of the change is owed to the events that culminated in the 1972 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. <#/>Concern over the environmental effects of the post-World World II economic boom became a major item on the agenda for international discussions. <#/>Since then, humankind has become more conscious of its ability to govern the evolutionary process.
<#/>The Stockholm legacy includes the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and a large number of international and national organizations working on environmental issues. <#/>The world took stock of its environmental conditions and trends in 1982 when it started preparing the ground for the formation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), under the leadership of Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. <#/>The WCED rekindled the Stockholm spirit and reshaped the environmental agenda to reflect the need to meet current human needs without undermining the requirements of future generations. <#/>This alternative agenda is summarized by the phrase 'sustainable development'.
<#/>The sustainable development agenda has become a major source of insight and inspiration for a number of international organizations. <#/>Various institutions, as well as governments, are starting to re-shape their thinking to reflect the WCED agenda. <#/>Some international donor agencies are also changing their development assistance policies to conform to the agenda. <#/>On the whole, the current changes in international development assistance and the introduction of structural adjustment programmes requires a fresh look at the relationship between environment and development. <#/>Countries such as Kenya, which depend on agriculture and wildlife for their economic growth, need to monitor the long-term effects of some of their current macro-economic policies to ensure that they do not undercut their basis for sustained growth.
<#/>Kenya's macro-economic policies have undergone major changes in recent years. <#/>The post-colonial optimism and the growth-oriented policies led to a number of problems in the economic structure. <#/>The industrial sector experienced over-investment while agricultural production was maintained with heavy subsidies. <#/>Excessive government investment was associated with the creation of monopolies and unnecessary protection. <#/>Although some of these policies helped promote local industrial growth and the expansion of smallholders, they were also associated with major distortions in the economy and choice of inefficient productive units. <#/>Recently, the government has introduced policies aimed at restructuring the economy. <#/>Most of these have been introduced under the structural adjustment programmes promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
<#/>The policy changes have been introduced to deal with problems such as the debt burden. <#/>The external debt ratio to GNP rose from 19.5 per cent in 1964 to 35.8 per cent in 1987. <#/>The need to improve the balance of payments plays a significant role in the way Kenya's economic policies are formulated. <#/>This, in turn, affects the ability of the country to introduce policies which emphasize sustainable development. <#/>The economic difficulties facing Kenya forces the country to formulate policies which emphasize short-term measures aimed at dealing with immediate problems such as budgetary allocation, improving foreign reserves and servicing external debts.
<#/>Sustainable development, on the other hand, requires long-term planning and involves some variables which are difficult to quantify. <#/>Conventional notions such as allocative efficiency are inadequate when dealing with long-term environmental questions. <#/>To supplement this short-term orientation, the government emphasizes long-term resource conservation, environmental education and technical training as ways to deal with ecological and economic problems.
<#/>Kenya's economic performance and management has been one of the best in Africa, despite major sources of instability such as the fluctuating commodity prices and the debt problem. <#/>Decreasing imports have offset declining payments from exports and helped to reduce the balance of payments deficit. <#/>The balance of payments over the 1981-85 period showed large overall deficits which were offset mainly by heavy borrowing from the IMF and reducing gross reserves. <#/>The increase in world coffee prices in 1985-86 favoured the balance of payments, but imports over the period also increased. <#/>Kenya was one of the first countries to accept IMF conditionality. <#/>As a result, the country started cutting back on investment and reducing its equity participation in investment projects to curb public expenditure. <#/>It should be noted that economic fortunes in Kenya were adversely affected by the 1984 drought which forced the country to import grain. <#/>On the whole, the Kenyan economy has been well-managed despite external pressures.
<#/>The dominant fiscal and monetary policies pursued by Kenya have been formulated in line with the stabilization and structural adjustment policies proposed by the World Bank and IMF. <#/>Stabilization measures encompass demand management policies which control domestic budgetary trends and improve the balance of payments. <#/>Exchange rate devaluation, real wage reductions and positive interest rate realization are some of the measures introduced to restore macro-economic imbalances.
<#/>To complement these policies, structural adjustment programmes are accompanied by measures to improve the incentive system, raise the efficiency of pricing mechanisms, promote investments and restore medium-term and long-term growth. <#/>Some of the current fiscal and monetary policies introduced in Kenya in recent years have direct or indirect implications for formulating sustainable development strategies. <#/>Taxation is currently seen as a way of raising revenue, encouraging saving and investment, promoting rural-urban balance, improving the revenue-expenditure ratio and extending structural adjustment measures.
<#/>The effects of some of these policies vary depending on whether the policies are short-term in nature (aimed at stabilization) or long-term (aimed at structural adjustment). <#/>Some policies, especially those related to eliminating subsidies, may have short-term benefits especially if they reflect the relative scarcity of the resources being used. <#/>But reducing subsidies may also worsen income disparities and therefore contribute to the degradation of the environment by the poorer members of society.
<#/>One of the measures introduced in Kenya in recent years has been to reduce the central government budget deficit. <#/>The main tool for this exercise has been demand management through curtailing public expenditure instead of mobilizing revenue. <#/>This strategy has meant that government resources devoted to conservation have not expanded as expected. <#/>Numerous conservation programmes planned in the mid-1980s have not been implemented due to the lack of funds. <#/>In addition, conservation activities that were previously undertaken by local authorities on behalf of the central government are threatened as a result of financial difficulties.
</I>
W2A038K
<#/><I> <h> Indigenous knowledge and ecological management </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Modern day natural resource policy makers tend to pay little attention to what traditional cultures have to offer. <#/>They prefer to base management practices on strategies and techniques which have worked in other settings but may not be suited to the local conditions. <#/>Yet within the African rural setting, ecological conditions, social institutions and available technologies are comparable to what prevailed in those regions 100 years ago.
<#/>This is even more evident in the semi-arid areas of Africa. <#/>In Kenya, these areas have essentially been the handmaiden to the rest of the economy. <#/>They have been exploited in different forms and at different times for the convenience of the higher agricultural potential areas. <#/>During the colonial era, policies were aimed at creating a labour pool to serve the settler economy. <#/>Today, semi-arid zones have become the recipients of population spillovers from the more humid regions. <#/>They also are important in tourism, which provides up to 30 per cent of Kenya's foreign exchange. <#/>Few policies have been developed to serve the areas on their own terms.
<#/>The only explicit efforts to address these regions arise during the periods of severe ecological stress in terms of drought or famine (for example in 1961, 1972 and 1984) when up to 30 per cent of the human and animal population are threatened. <#/>But these efforts are always short-lived. <#/>This implies that 82 per cent of Kenya, or 46 million hectares of land and 20 percent of the population, has been marginalized. <#/>It is thus subject to restricted development opportunities which are defined not on the basis of the needs of these areas but on those of the higher potential regions.
<#/>This chapter explores the relationships between co-operative work and ecosystem potential among the Akamba. <#/>It is part of a larger study which considers relationships between land tenure, land-use and social organization. <#/>It explores the hypothesis that incentives for group work increase as the productivity of the ecosystem decreases.
<#/><h> Conceptual issues </h>
<#/>Despite the past difficulties encountered in the arid and semi-arid areas (ASALs) in attempting to foster sustainable production, there is no real escape. <#/>These regions can only increase in importance as productivity in the more humid zones approaches full capacity. <#/>The government has in fact come to terms with the need to raise this productivity. <#/>The most significant action was to set up the Ministry of Reclamation and Development of Arid, Semi-Arid and Wastelands in May 1989. <#/>This has occurred in the face of demands of a population growing at 4 per cent per annum in the humid areas and 5-7 per cent in the ASALs.
<#/>The challenge then is to identify and develop those strategies, technologies and techniques while containing the crucial elements of sustainability. <#/>It is the position of this chapter that the source of such increases in productivity is the local community and its indigenous knowledge and that the foundation of this knowledge is based on traditional natural resource management.
<#/>There are five elements that characterize traditional natural resource management systems. <#/>The first element is that precolonial society was geared towards the conservation objective. <#/>As such it had insights on living in harmony with the environment which today's technocratic world has lost. <#/>It is precisely this holistic approach, however, that makes it difficult to identify specific conservation strategies among traditional land management systems. <#/>This leaves a blurred picture that has led individuals to dismiss East Africa's subsistence farmers as lazy or ignorant about soil conservation. <#/>Colonial officers perceived farmers' interaction with the land as predatory, never actively improving it and instead exhausting it through thoughtless tilling.
<#/>Such perceptions arose from a colonizing culture which had a cartesian rather than holistic view of the world. <#/>Conservation was thus undertaken as special projects and even by individuals or groups separate from those involved in utilizing the environment and contributing to its degradation. <#/>Some of the major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fall in this category. <#/>This special-projects-approach, coupled with a dichotomy between those who damage the environment and those who care for it, is a feature which is missing in traditional resource management systems.
<#/>The second characteristic of the traditional system is that resource use is based on a local view of the world. <#/>Traditional societies tended to exist in a single ecosystem or at most three adjacent and closely-related ecosystems. <#/>This meant that they could draw support from only one or three ecosystems.
<#/>Furthermore, as subsistence was the main purpose of production, there was a limit to the relief or 'aid' they could receive from neighbouring communities. <#/>This generated a high degree of independence within communities which is an important ingredient of sustainable resource use. <#/>This is in direct contrast with the modern global technological civilization which draws support from the entire biosphere; a feature which has negatively effected the perception of the environment as locally dispensable. <#/>The 'myth of superabundance' has been generated. <#/>It holds that if a particular resource is exhausted in one area it can always be obtained from another region.
<#/>The third feature of traditional resource management arises from the minimal degree of specialization and thus 'occupation' within such societies. <#/>The only important distinction in 'occupation' occurred along gender lines. <#/>Even this degree of specialization was qualified by the fact that in an agricultural society, for example, all people—men, women, and children—engaged in farming to some degree. <#/>If cattle were present, all people had some part to play in livestock keeping. <#/>The distinction that can be made is that women were the farmers and performed the bulk of the agricultural labour. <#/>Men performed the bulk of livestock tending activities. <#/>This had the effect of encouraging the development of a broad-based knowledge of the environment and its management. <#/>The highly specialized nature of the modern technological world has created divisions between those who know about the environment, those who plan for its use and those who use it. <#/>And very often these are three different categories of people who do not always work together.
<#/>The fourth feature for consideration is the traditional approach to knowledge and expertise. <#/>Modern society has a tendency to create a class of specialists or experts who exist in isolation and have the last word on all issues. <#/>This gives their knowledge a high profile which favours such specialists because they are trained through a costly formal educational system which has been elevated above informal education, particularly in highly-technical areas such as natural resource management. <#/>Traditional expertise is produced at a much lower cost through informal experimental methods involving the accumulation of experience. <#/>All people have the opportunity to acquire it, which reduces its premium in today's world. <#/>It tends to be 'invisible' at the policy level because of biases developed throughout the formal education system and because of the limitations of prevailing approaches in eliciting such information.
<#/>The fifth feature of traditional communities is that resource utilization was approached with both physical and psychological tools, with the latter divided into intellectual and spiritual aspects. <#/>Hyams refers to these three as the 'trinity of tools'. <#/>Physical tools were those made of wood, bone, stone or metal. <#/>Intellectual tools represented the most effective methods of approaching a task and became embodied in scientific 'disciplines'. <#/>Spiritual tools expressed the human relationship with the rest of the universe and were reflected in mythologies and religions. <#/>Thus, in using this trinity of tools humankind employed spiritual tools to invoke the relevant spirit or god who would confer upon them the mandate to purposefully and <-/willfully> bring a specific natural resource under their control for their use. <#/>Intellectual tools defined the method of work, while physical tools were used to perform the actual task at hand.
<#/>One of the most significant differences between the traditional and the modern industrial age lies in the absence of the use of spiritual tools in the latter. <#/>These tools assisted humankind to control and check changes they make in their environment and reflected the view that the whole world was alive. <#/>Finding themselves animated with 'spirit', humans extended this feature to other living and inanimate things. <#/>This is the basis of the religious beliefs referred to collectively as animism. <#/>The effect was an approach of resource utilization whose reverential basis was manifested in the widespread use of propitiatory rites. <#/>These rites served to confer a '... sense of responsibility towards other species in the soil community'. <#/>Such an attitude was particularly valuable towards developing a conservation approach towards natural resources.
<#/>Today the spirit of the age takes its essence from a mechanistic world view, central to the Judeo-Christian tradition that is 'antagonistic or indifferent to nature'. <#/>In this philosophy there is a divinely ordained natural hierarchy. <#/>God is the supreme being ruling over the rest of nature followed by the human male with women, children, mammals, non-mammal animal life, plant life and inanimate nature following in descending order. <#/>The tendency has been to bring nature under the control of humans for their use. <#/>In this way the reverence accorded to nature has been ignored. <#/>Humankind through the development of science and a new 'rationality' has taken full control— with an anthropocentric position.
<#/>This new approach treats the world as though it were a mineral resource—to be exploited with no consideration for the future. <#/>This was probably <-/alright> when the world population was low. <#/>Today, a burgeoning global population and the spread of exploitative attitudes and philosophy has led to severe environmental degradation to a point where nature is rapidly losing its regenerative capability in some regions of the world. <#/>Concomitantly, humankind has lost control over nature, thus becoming helpless. <#/>All is not lost, however. <#/>Highly developed physical and intellectual tools exist today which can be used to save humankind and the environment even in the absence of the spiritual tools.
<#/>The so-called traditional societies have at the core of their fabric an ability to change, adapt and adopt new crops and livestock for production systems and techniques. <#/>It is therefore not up to any third party to suggest preservation or a return to a previous form. <#/>The policy managers can assist such communities by devising appropriate strategies. <#/>The point of departure is understanding the community, how they were, how they are and what assistance they require. <#/>The communities in question are located in Machakos District, south-east of the high potential land that surrounds Mt. Kenya. <#/>About 76 per cent of Machakos District falls in three semi-arid agro-ecological zones.
<#/><h> Akamba traditional resource management </h>
<#/>The Akamba have experienced several changes relating to land tenure and land-use. <#/>Originally, they were pastoralists and hunters. <#/>On migrating to the Mbooni range in the 1600s from their original home in the Kilimanjaro region, they found themselves restricted to a smaller area. <#/>This, together with a growing population, forced them to start relying more and more on agriculture. <#/>It was here, according to Lambert, that they began to appreciate the value of cultivation, 'beginning a patriarchal land-kin synthesis'.
<#/>This transformation from pastoralism to subsistence agriculture led to distinct changes in land-use and land tenure. <#/>Pastoralists are primarily livestock-keepers who are nomadic. <#/>Land is used mainly for livestock management over an extensive area. <#/>Land boundaries are defined in the short-term but are fluid in the long-term. <#/>Most importantly, they are determined by the prevailing social and ecological conditions. <#/>The agriculturalists, on the other hand, are basically sedentary. <#/>Use of land is relatively more intensive and they generally have distinct institutional means of acquiring or buying new land for personal or family use. <#/>The concept of land ownership is accordingly more permanent.
<#/>Despite these changes in land use, the Akamba as pastoralists or as agriculturalists had to deal with the limitations imposed by the arid environment they lived in. <#/>The conditions of aridity and rainfall variability are common in Machakos area. <#/>The mean annual rainfall varies from 500 mm in the lower plains to 1,300 mm in the hills. <#/>Ominde notes that the real problem of the region is the unreliability of rainfall. </I>

W2A039K
<#/><I> <h> Managing arid and semi-arid areas in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>From the stand-point of theory, innovations can only be discussed as such in the context of physical, social and psychological development of communities. <#/>It is possible to dip back into community memory, find a technology and utilize it to solve a particular development problem. <#/>Too often those who work in development not only take a narrow sectoral view—usually <-/economistic> —but also talk of packages which lack the social or psychological roots to nourish communities. <#/>Meanwhile, innovation is seen as external to the communities which are supposedly being developed. <#/>Others equate being new with being innovative. <#/>These attitudes are atheoretical from a development point of view, for it is the mixing of past, present and future knowledge that leads to innovation in development. <#/>The case of land-use in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) over time illustrates this concretely.
<#/><h> Traditional land-use technologies </h>
<#/>The most important ASAL land-use problem is how to conserve water and soil for livestock and, secondarily, crop production. <#/>Development experts now recognize that traditional societies coped with poor soils and the shortage of water by adopting agricultural practices which emphasized people moving over large areas to utilize the little water available. <#/>People also used the vegetation which was produced by the scattered rain for their livestock. <#/>Although experts have for a long time ignored the knowledge which the people developed to cope with the scattered rainfall, they are now finding that such traditional knowledge is not only useful but also important if the semi-arid areas are to be developed. <#/>Already, new institutions are being set up in different parts of the world to tap such knowledge and incorporate it into other formal research activities.
<#/>One of the most important traditional agricultural techniques was slash-and-burn. <#/>A farmer came to an area which was not farmed and cut the existing bush but made sure that some of the traditional fruit and construction trees were left standing. <#/>The farmer waited for the cut material to dry, and, just before the rains, it was burned. <#/>Not all the trees died. <#/>Since the stumps were not usually taken out, some of the cut trees would regenerate even before the farmer planted. <#/>The roots of the trees, shrubs and other plants which died during the burning ensured that the soil was aerated and that the little rain would percolate rather than run off. <#/>Current minimum tillage research and praxis make similar recommendations. <#/>Who then is innovating?
<#/>When the rains came, the farmer planted many crops, not in lines but all inter-mixed. <#/>Maize, millet, sorghum, cowpeas (<foreign/>Vigna <foreign/ spp.), pigeon peas (<foreign/>Cajanus <foreign/>cajan), beans, assorted melons and many others would be planted together. <#/>These crops usually did extremely well the first year since the burning process added some ash. <#/>The ash and other nutrients in the soil resulting from the fallow period ensured the farmer some good yields . <#/>When the yields started dropping, the farmer left the land to rest and grow new bush which would be cut at some future date. <#/>This system of bush fallowing was an important way to regenerate the fertility of the soil. <#/>It has found new catechists under either low-external input sustainable agriculture or bio-intensive agriculture. <#/>Who then is innovating?
<#/>Slash-and-burn agriculture coupled with bush fallow was important in maintaining soil fertility. <#/>At the same time it prevented extensive erosion, for the cleared parts were surrounded by bush-covered land. <#/>The little rain which came could not cause heavy run-off leading to gullies. <#/>It infiltrated vegetation-covered areas to recharge the water table. <#/>Slash-and-burn agriculture is not possible where there are many people in a small area since continuously opening new land is impossible. <#/>A particular piece of land must produce food and fodder for families who often do not have access to other land. <#/>It is in these dry and relatively crowded lands that the challenge of developing agriculture to produce enough food for the people is enormous. <#/>The challenge can be minimized by using knowledge which is not found in books but which is part of the living traditions of the people. <#/>This knowledge, however, is often not taken seriously and most of the advice given by the local people is often ignored.

<#/><h> Indigenous knowledge </h>
<#/>From a land-use perspective traditional knowledge had valuable contributions to make. <#/>First and foremost, by leaving stumps and some trees in agricultural land, the farmer increased infiltration of whatever rain fell. <#/>This fact is now recognized in all the minimum tillage literature.
<#/>Burning—banned by colonial agriculture laws, and still banned—added nutrients to the soil and minimized weeding. <#/>Perhaps most significant, burning has been shown to contribute to pest and disease control. <#/>Today, burning is de-emphasized by most extension systems which want farmers to use the crop residues directly for fodder and indirectly for manure. <#/>However, there is still a case to be made for it on cropland, particularly for disease control. <#/>For example, cotton farmers must burn all their cotton stalks every season and are not even allowed to use them for firewood.
<#/>It is important to agree, and soon, on the utility of burning in livestock production—the most important activity in semi-arid lands. <#/>People in semi-arid areas know that the only effective way to control weeds and bush (which choke grass and thereby reduce the carrying capacity of rangelands) is to burn. <#/>In some traditions it is common knowledge that some superior grasses grow and perform better after burning. <#/>There is not enough labour in semi-arid lands for manual bush clearing. <#/>Neither is there capital for extensive machinery use. <#/>It should therefore be clear that the only way to reclaim rangeland and improve its carrying capacity is to burn the inferior vegetation to get better fodder.
<#/>Where there has been serious denudation and the grass cover has been replaced by bush, some labour input has to be made before burning. <#/>Again the traditional slash-and-burn techniques seem to offer a solution. <#/>In this system, a farmer would fell a few big trees to assure that there would be enough material for a good burn. <#/>The felled trees provided fodder for the animals before being burned. <#/>Recent range research has picked up this traditional idea to increase the carrying capacity of rangelands.
<#/>In this technology, practised by as varied peoples as the Samburu and Kuria, trees are half cut and pushed to the ground to be browsed by livestock. <#/>Care must be taken that the trees are not clean cut for that would kill them. <#/>Where the branches cover the ground, natural grass reseeding takes place. <#/>Over a few seasons, if practised systematically, even denuded land can be reclaimed. <#/>If rangeland is treated this way and burned it is possible to increase the rate of grass reseeding and maintain increased browse and tick control in areas where dips and dipping are unavailable. <#/>This should lead to a much higher carrying capacity of the land whilst improving the soils. <#/>Again, the limiting factor in the adoption of this traditionally derived technique seems to be the lack of imagination on the part of extension policy planners and development practitioners who still enforce the irrelevant colonial anti-burning laws.
<#/>Mixed cropping—planting different crops with different root patterns, growth and maturity rates and uses together—not only utilized the soil and available moisture more efficiently but also made food available at different times. <#/>The impact of mixed cropping on the soil is positive and therefore important. <#/>Where there are many types of crops planted together, there is very little erosion because there is always some crop covering the ground. <#/>Even intermittent storms do not dislodge the soil. <#/>Keeping a ground cover of grasses, shrubs, creepers or trees also assures that the nutrients in the soil are not burned by the sun. <#/>Finally, mixed cropping systems used leguminous plants—including trees, shrubs and creepers—which fix atmospheric nitrogen.
<#/>During the past 80 years, experts have concentrated on telling people who live in semi-arid lands to go into single-crop systems. <#/>Yet recent research shows that mixed systems benefit not only the soil but the farmer's pocket. <#/>It thus seems important that farmers continue to practise these techniques. <#/>The simplest mixtures are of crop legumes and grains, thus interplanting maize with beans, cowpeas, pigeon peas or green grams should be encouraged Since the researchers have still to work out complete packages of what works in what soil, farmers themselves could continue experimenting on what works best on their individual pieces of land. <#/>The more complex mixtures involve cereals, crop legumes and trees.
<#/>Trees are important in semi-arid land agriculture for moisture conservation and for production. <#/>In traditional agriculture, there was knowledge of the useful fruit, fodder, medicinal and construction trees. <#/>These were maintained for their important economic uses. <#/>They coexisted with the crops. <#/>Yet there has been less research on these trees than on exotic trees. <#/>As a result the extension systems can tell us about 'alley cropping' with exotics but not with traditional trees. <#/>The problem with exotic tree species is that they are vulnerable to diseases and pests in ways as yet unknown to their proponents.
<#/>Extension of exotic tree species is also problematic since they must often come from centralized nurseries. <#/>Transport becomes a problem when projects move away from central to group nurseries. <#/>There is seldom enough water for the nursery and all seedlings may be lost. <#/>Some extension officers give seeds to farmers, hoping that somehow they will be planted. <#/>All this ignores local trees which are adapted to the specific circumstances and which have economic roles. <#/>In Kitui, for example, there are many fruit trees which farmers will leave in the farm and use. <#/>There are construction trees which they will protect and fodder trees which they will utilize. <#/>The challenge then is to design a farming system which can be used by the farmers to support soil and water conservation by improving and commercializing these trees.
<#/>There is a need for new thinking on tree extension. <#/>Farmers ask for fruit trees—mainly budded citrus. <#/>This should be encouraged for the commercial and nutritional benefits of these exotic fruit trees are clear. <#/>Yet the consumption of fruits from traditional unimproved trees is probably surpassed only by consumption of mangoes. <#/>Why not invest in extension of the traditional fruits and their improvement as well as developing markets for them?
<#/>Even more important may be the issue of traditional fodder trees. <#/>They regenerate themselves without nurseries. <#/>Some are clearly nitrogen-fixing while others stress crops and thus are not good agroforestry trees. <#/>What must be done to improve their yield? <#/>How do we protect them from disease and pests? <#/>Which of the traditional trees are as suitable as <foreign/>Sesbania <foreign/>sesban, <foreign/>prosopis or <foreign/>Leucaena species or other exotic agroforestry trees? <#/>Answers to these questions are urgently needed. <#/>They must be sought out of farmers' experiences.
<#/>For good production in semi-arid lands all efforts must be concentrated on improving the soils and retaining moisture. <#/>Trees and cropping patterns which keep the ground covered for most of the year, fix nitrogen and minimize investment in labour are the way to relevant development. <#/>It is doubtful if such systems will be developed if traditional knowledge is ignored. <#/>The challenge for development must be to find ways of collecting such knowledge from the farmers who know the traditions. <#/>This knowledge must also be formalized so that it is not lost with the passing of the old people.
<#/><h> The colonial roots of ASAL programmes </h>
<#/>Whereas the focus on land-use innovations may not seem to hinge on the development activities of the state, the colonial state's activities affected people's access to land. <#/>The history of ASALs and people's struggles for their rightful share of development goes back to the early colonial period. <#/>Alienation of land for European settlement shifted the African populations into lands which had not been utilized continuously before the colonial period. <#/>The bulk of land alienation took place in the first two decades of this century. <#/>Large tracts of land were taken from pastoral people, particularly in the Rift Valley. </I>
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<#/><I> <h> Managing watersheds in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>A consistent thread which runs through current assessments of the state of the world's natural resources is the need to take urgent steps to reduce the rate at which natural resources are being depleted if the survival of humankind on Earth is to be secured. <#/>Fresh water is one of such resources, the depletion of which is causing the greatest concern. <#/>Some of the critical issues which have emerged with respect to the world's fresh water resources revolve around several general concerns.
<#/>The first is how best to preserve or restore the global ecological balance to a level that enables nature's own methods and processes of generating and conserving water to again operate without impairment. <#/>The second is whether and how existing fresh water reserves can be developed and managed in a manner that supports those natural methods and processes. <#/>The third is whether humankind's own patterns of consumptive utilization can be controlled in such a way as to prevent further relapse into waste, pollution and depletion.
<#/>The first of those issues is beyond the scope of this discussion, being a technical matter best left to climatologists, ecologists and environmentalists. <#/>The other two, however, are the concern of this chapter. <#/>The chapter examines, in particular, one aspect only of what needs to be <-/targetted> in the design of a water management regime, namely the preservation and protection of the watershed and the catchment area or drainage basin within which its water reserves flow. <#/>For that purpose it evaluates the systems and mechanisms which exist in Kenya's law, practice and custom regarding the management of watersheds, and suggests alternative innovations, the adoption of which could improve the country's capability to deal with the issue.
<#/><h> Watersheds in Kenya </h>
<#/>A watershed is essentially a ridge or mountain range which separates one drainage basin or area from the others. <#/>In common parlance, it is the point of commencement of all rivers and their tributaries, gullies and other channels which drain into a given surface water system or catchment area. <#/>A single watershed may therefore constitute the head waters for more than one catchment area.
<#/>Figure 5.1 delineates Kenya's primary watersheds and the catchment areas supported by them. <#/>As will be observed from the map, these watersheds lie in numerous ranges, the most important of which are in Mt. Elgon, Cherangani Hills, Elgeyo Escarpment, Nandi Hills, Nyando Escarpment, Kisii Highlands, Central Highlands, Mt. Kenya, Nyandarua Ranges, Aberdare Range, Ngong Hills and the Mau Escarpment.
<#/>These support five main catchment areas: the Lake Victoria area drained by the Nzoia, Yala, Nyando, Sondu (Miriu), Kuja and Migori rivers; the Rift Valley drained by the Molo, Kerio, Perkerra, Turkwel and Southern Ewaso Nyiro rivers; the Tana drained mainly by the Tana Rivers; the Athi drained by the Athi, Galana and Sabaki rivers; and the Northern Ewaso Nyiro drained mainly by the Ewaso Nyiro of like name and serve intermittent tributaries which discharge their waters into the Lorian Swamp. <#/>Krhoda has provided a useful estimate of the total area of the country covered by each catchment area and the mean annual precipitation in each case.
<#/>Although this does not provide a complete hydrometric picture for each catchment area, it is to be expected that apart from natural precipitation, the absolute volume of water reserved at each head and its capability for functional regeneration or renewal will depend on the condition of the watershed itself. <#/>Similarly, the total amount of run-off into any given river, tributary, <-/gulley> or other channel ultimately depends on the health of the relevant catchment area.
<#/>Water resources in Kenya have recently acquired more economic importance as a result of renewed government emphasis on the development of arid and semi-arid (ASAL) areas. <#/>In addition to the development of these areas, further development in the rest of the country will entail further pressure of water resources.
<#/>A number of indicators may be used to gauge the general condition and vitality of watersheds and catchment areas. <#/>Among these are the range and density of grass and vegetative cover still available in a given area; the nature and extent of forest reserves thereon; the degree and rapidity with which natural degradation is occurring; and the pattern and effects of overall climatic change in the region within which it is comprised. <#/>Assessed by these indicators, Kenya's watersheds and catchment areas cannot be said to be particularly healthy.
<#/>As regards grass, vegetative and forest cover, significant depletion has in fact occurred over the past three decades. <#/>Grasslands depletion has been particularly serious in the productive drylands and rangelands as well as in higher altitudes adjoining areas of intense agricultural activity. <#/>Similarly, although the map suggests that the country's remaining protected forests are more or less coincident with the main watersheds identified above, these are now covered mainly with softwood plantations; indigenous reserves having largely been destroyed. <#/>Indeed, as elsewhere in Africa, Kenya continues to lose a significant amount of forested areas each year.
<#/>As regards natural degradation and climatic change, it is now well established that as a result of human activity, the nature of which is discussed below, these are being accelerated at most alarming levels. <#/>These changes are no longer limited to discreet ecosystems or regions. <#/>Rather, they have become global in character, leading to considerable investments in research and technology development by governments and international institutions in an attempt to restore the global ecological balance. <#/>Depending on how and by what agency that degradation or change occurs, the renewability or regeneration of the resources affected cannot always be generated.
<#/>The causes of this state of affairs have long been recognized as primarily anthropogenic in character. <#/>These include progressive encroachment on catchments and watersheds in the form of human settlements, cultivation and grazing of livestock, wanton destruction of woodlands for timber and fuelwood and enormous pressure on land and water resources as a result of population increase and hence of higher per capita demands thereon. <#/>In addition, note has been taken elsewhere of the fact that changes in indigenous production systems coupled with widespread stagnation in agricultural technology in most of rural Africa has created disequilibrium between patterns of resource use and their availability.
<#/>The consequences of these processes are evident everywhere. <#/>Four of these are relevant to this discussion. <#/>The first is significant impairment of the capacity of various watersheds to retain sufficient reserves to sustain normal flow in some catchment areas. <#/>In addition, reduced run-off has been known to occur in these areas especially at the interface between productive and marginal areas. <#/>The second is increased sediment yields due to erosion in some of the major rivers such as the Tana, Nzoia, Yala, Kerio, Nyando and Sondu (Miriu).
<#/>As a result, the transportation capacity of these rivers, measured in terms of volume and levels, has been known to fluctuate considerably. <#/>The third— also a consequence of the second—is downstream flooding which in some cases has pushed agricultural populations further upstream into forested areas. <#/>The fourth, which has been an important phenomenon in the arid and semi-arid areas traversed by some of these rivers, is much higher levels of evaporation than previously experienced.
<#/><h> Watershed management in Kenya </h>
<#/>The consequences enumerated above suggest that the issue of how best to design a management system which would facilitate the sustainable development of watersheds (and catchment areas) is ultimately an environmental one. <#/>This indeed has been accepted as the case in Kenya's 1989-93 Development Plan. <#/>It is necessary therefore that enquiry is made into the nature, structure and dynamics of the system as embodied in existing law, practice and custom and an assessment made of its efficacy.
<#/>Very broadly speaking, the mechanisms which constitute the present system of watershed management in Kenya may be classified into four typologies: those designed for the regulation of land use; those concerned with the protection of the soil and its fertility; those dealing specifically with catchments; and those framed broadly in terms of environmental planning.
<#/>As a typology the land-use approach assumes that proper resource management must be anchored on good land-use and proper husbandry. <#/>The theory of the case is that production and productivity depend essentially on the technology of resource exploitation. <#/>The approach contains both positive and negative elements. <#/>In the one case it requires a broad form of zoning which allows only particular crops or land-use types to flourish in designated agro-ecological zones. <#/>And in the other, it prohibits the exploitation of certain areas—usually defined in terms of gradients or proximity to protect resources—either absolutely or only after certain conservation measures have been carried out.
<#/>The Agriculture Act provides an excellent example of this approach. <#/>Although the legislation is primarily concerned with how best to increase agricultural production, it also sets certain ground rules about what is regarded as good land use and husbandry. <#/>The Agriculture (Basic Land Usage) Rules (L.N. 26 of 1965) thus provide, for example, that no one may cultivate or pasture livestock on slopes exceeding 35 per cent.
<#/>The Act also authorizes the Minister of Agriculture to make rules for general protection of slopes, catchment areas and reforestation. <#/>Similar authority exists, <foreign/>inter <foreign/>alia, in the Chief's Authority Act and the Wildlife (Conservation and Management) (Amendment) Act. <#/>Thus, not only are conventional agricultural and livestock practices covered, but agroforestry and game ranching are covered as well. <#/>In addition, broad powers exist within the Act enabling the Minister of Agriculture to evaluate the management condition of any land used for agricultural purposes on a case-by-case basis.
<#/>Where the Minister is satisfied that any such land is not being properly managed or is being so mismanaged that its condition is likely to further deteriorate, he or she may issue a series of management orders specifying what corrective measures are necessary. <#/>Failure to execute such measures may lead to dispossession of land. <#/>Although this particular power is not normally invoked, it does provide a most potent tool in the face of bad land-use.
<#/>The soil conservation approach differs from the first mainly in the comprehensiveness of the range of measures which may be required for the protection of the soil and its fertility. <#/>Here, the target is not often the individual occupier or owner of land nor even any particular parcel of land or area. <#/>Under the Agricultural Act the Minister can propose broad land preservation schemes in such areas as require special attention. <#/>Such schemes, when approved, operate more or less as a land-use plan in respect of those particular areas. <#/>It is in pursuit of these and similar powers that specific conservation measures such as bench-terracing, gully protection and similar measures were, throughout the colonial era, enforced. <#/>Similar powers may be evoked under the Chief's Authority Act and the Forests Act.
<#/>The catchment protection approach consists of measures <-/targetted> specifically at catchment areas. <#/>This approach is conceived of as part of local level planning and is therefore combined with the generation of water management policy in discreet settings. <#/>For this purpose, the Water (Catchment Board) Rules made under the Water Act divides Kenya into six catchment areas. <#/>These are identical to the list provided by Krhoda, with the exception that the Lake Victoria area is split into two divisions designated as North and South.
<#/>A board is set up for each area. <#/>The duties of the board include the monitoring of consumptive utilization of water and tendering advice to the Water Resources Authority on any matter within its particular jurisdiction. <#/>The Act also sets up Regional Water Committees for each province to advise on water management matters or issues germane to their respective administrative units.
<#/>Although the linkage between Catchment Boards and Regional Committees is not clear, the intention is to temper technical proficiency with policy relevance. <#/>It is important to note that this typology makes no specific reference to watersheds, nor does it take account of the wider context in which catchment systems operate, as well as the implications of recently-established institutions such as the National Water Conservation and Pipeline Corporation.
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