Outlooks on biodiversity: indigenous peoples and local communities’ contributions to the implementation of the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011-2020 a complement to the fourth edition of the global biodiversity outlook

The Ogiek’s experience with protected areas in Mount Elgon, Kenya: Ways towards rights-based conservation
The population of the Ogiek of Mt. Elgon is about 18,000 and over the years they have been forced to cluster in three areas: about 10,000 live in Chepyuk, 3,000 are scattered in Trans Nzoia and about 3,000 Ogiek still live in our ancestral lands on Chepkitale in Mount Elgon, which supports a rich variety of vegetation ranging from montane forest to high open moorland. As hunter gatherers indigenous to this area, Article 63(2)(d)(ii) of the Kenyan Constitution recognises our rights to our lands. But the fact is that the Government has not put this into practice and this is the bone of contention for all forest communities in Kenya, not just for the Ogiek.

The Ogiek’s struggle and impacts of evictions

In the 1930s the effects of land dispossession and colonialism really started to be felt by the Ogiek. The communities were first evicted from their lower lands and restricted to the higher mountain forest areas, while the lower lands were taken by colonialists for farming. From 2000 onwards, the community’s struggles have become more urgent and visible as, with the imposition of Chepkitale game reserve, the final part of the community lands have been gazetted as protected areas, following on from the imposition of Mt. Elgon National Park in 1968, followed by the forest reserves.

Communities have been evicted from all of these areas except Chepkitale where the community has kept on returning after every eviction. Each community member has been at one time or another a victim of evictions; I doubt that there is a single Ogiek family that has not faced evictions. I have experienced evictions three times myself; others have been evicted many more times.
These evictions have broken communities and families. Many acts of violence have been committed against communities such as burning of our houses and confiscating or burning of our belongings. We have had cases where community members have been shot dead by the forest guards or where our livestock has been shot. Because of these violent experiences, community members do not resist evictions but hide in the forests or flee and then come back. The community has also been taking legal options and pushing for change to existing laws which have been used to justify their land dispossession.

For the community, impacts of these evictions have included restrictions on harvesting of forest resources, which has threatened communities’ food security. This was very much pronounced in the 50ies and 70ies, where it exposed the community to unimaginable hunger. Another negative impact is the lack of access to medicinal plants. Others who have been completely evicted from the forests were forced to change their livelihoods and become farmers.

These evictions have not only had negative impacts on communities’ livelihoods but also on the forest itself. In some of the areas from which the communities had been completely evicted, the Government established timber plantations and there has been significant forest degradation partly through forest conservation policies (e.g. the “Shamba system”) that encourage degradation. This is because here at Mt Elgon, a system which in theory should be used to move farmers into degraded forest areas to plant trees among their crops and so help restore the forest, is instead used to move famers into indigenous forest lands (Ogiek ancestral lands). The farmers gradually expand their fields into the forest, destroying the forest, and replacing it with farmland which the Kenya Forest Service can then – after a number of years – use to plant exotic species that are cash rich for those in control, in place of the indigenous forest that was rich in biodiversity and in cultural importance for the Ogiek. Corruption among government officials has therefore had a negative impact in many of these supposedly protected areas, not only in this way but also through encouraging charcoal burning, elephant poaching, etc., all of which the Ogiek community opposes.

Whakatane assessment as a way to facilitate conflict resolution

In 2011, IUCN agreed to pilot rights-based assessments of protected areas called the “Whakatane Mechanism” to address the injustices that have been inflicted on indigenous peoples through the creation of protected areas. One of the pilot assessments took place at Mt. Elgon, including Mt Elgon National Park, but focused especially on Ogiek land that had been turned into Chepkitale Game Reserve in 2000 without our consent.

The assessment took place in three stages: a first roundtable, a scoping study and another roundtable discussion. Stakeholder roundtable discussions took place in Nairobi between the Ogiek communities, Kenya Forestry Service (KFS), Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the Ministry of Environment, the IUCN country office and the local government.

The Whakatane Mechanism really helped us to have amicable discussions with the different actors and it became clear that the different interests could indeed be consolidated and that a win-win situation could be achieved. It became clear to all stakeholders that the communities were not interested in destroying the forest; if they were, they would have already done so.

One outcome of the assessment was the recommendation that the land should be reverted back to the Ogiek community The County Council declared in a resolution that they would not oppose this and since 2012 we have had amicable discussions to achieve an out-of-court settlement. Since then, at least up until today – March 2016 - the Ogiek from Mt. Elgon have never faced any evictions and we have had slightly better relations with the KFS and the KWS. But from the community level we can only accept that the attitudes have indeed changed if laws are changed and the communities finally get their land titles. Interacting with other indigenous communities in Kenya like the Sengwer shows me that attitudes have not yet changed, as the Sengwer continue to be evicted.