Activist capmpaigns against Kenya’s amendment of forest protection laws

By Nneka Nwogwugwu

Simon Nganga, Kenya’s environment activist has campaigned against attempts to seize what’s left of the lush forest bordered by highways and housing estates.

Persistent efforts by developers and powerful individuals to seize chunks of the bush as their own were defeated under historic laws enacted to protect Kenya’s dwindling forests from unchecked logging and environmental destruction.

But a proposal expected before parliament on Thursday seeks a major change to these protections, by allowing politicians to determine if public forest can be carved out and handed over to private interests.

Under the contentious amendment, anyone wishing to alter forest boundaries to claim ownership of land could lobby parliament directly, bypassing approval from the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), which is currently mandated to scrutinise such bids.

“If it goes through… that will open a Pandora’s Box,” Nganga told AFP beneath the canopy of Ngong Road Forest, a 1,224-hectare (3,025-acre) tract of indigenous woodland inhabited by bush bucks, Sykes monkeys and over 100 species of birds.

“Everyone will want a piece of the forest, which is very dangerous for our forests, and our future.”

The amendment to the Forest Conservation and Management Act — reforms passed after decades of rampant land clearing — has been opposed by the environment ministry and the KFS, and has roused significant community anger.

It has also drawn rare criticism from the United Nations, which headquarters its environment programme in Nairobi, and is just weeks away from staging the world’s highest-level decision-making assembly on nature and biodiversity in the Kenyan capital.

The amendment argues that granting KFS primary authority over hearing and ruling on changes to forest boundaries “unnecessarily limits the right of any person to petition Parliament” as granted under the constitution.

Nganga said the forest laws had proved a bulwark against encroachment — since first passing in 2005, no land within Ngong Road Forest had been legally hived off, keeping its boundary firmly intact.