Release Date: 2010-06-03

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 2009 Copenhagen World Summit on Climate Change thrust the issues of encroachment on forest land and ecological crisis relating to the Mau water towers in Kenya’s Rift Valley region into the national and international spotlight. However, it is the struggle for supremacy within and between rival political parties and for dominance over the populous Rift Valley—or more specifically the Kalenjin vote—which has turned the Mau into the most explosive political issue in the politics of the Kibaki succession in the run-up to the August 2010constitutional referendum and the decisive 2012 elections. Based on six month extensive research this report examine how the Mau land and environmental crisis has become the nerve center of Kenya’s politics. The Kenya government needs to immediately establish an independent Agency on Water Towers to shield the water towers from politics,professionally manage and coordinate all affairs of rehabilitating the Mau complex and restoring vital environmental hubs and to avert resource-based conflicts.

Over the years, systematic encroachment on forestlands by the colonial and successor states resulted in the destruction of the eco-system, drying of rivers, intermittent droughts, food insecurity and increasing poverty in one of Africa’s largest water towers—which is also a source of 12 regional rivers and constitutes a national asset with an estimated annual economic value of over $1.3 billion.  

The politics of land in the Mau have shaped the political trajectory of the Rift Valley Province since colonial times, with major implications on the security, ethnic and racial relations in the province and the country.

The intense politicization of land and environmental crisis in the Mau water towers by the two Coalition partners—the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement—to win the Kalenjin vote has not only subordinated the environmental agenda to partisan politics,but has equally threatened the key pillars of the national economy, including wildlife tourism, hydroelectric output and agricultural production.

Government evictions of settlers and squatters from the Mau forests in 2004 played into the politics of the 2005Constitutional Referendum leading to the collapse of the Kibaki-led National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) and the subsequent defeat of the government in the referendum. Moreover, the Mau issue became a key tool for political mobilization of the Kalenjin in the North and Central Rift Valley regions during the controversial 2007elections that triggered the 2008 post-election violence. And the 2009 Mau evictions have triggered elite fragmentation and disarray in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Party of National Unity(PNU), leading to political fallouts, realignments and new ethno-regional ethnic alliances ahead of 2010 Constitutional Referendum and 2012 General Elections. 

The declining cattle economy of the Maasai as a result of the Mau’s degradation remains a key fault line in the perennial inter-ethnic conflicts involving the pastoralist Maasai and agriculturalist Kipsigis.

The international community has inadvertently entered the fray.  The global climate change agenda has drawn international attention to the Mau tragedy, but the international community now runs the risk of plunging into domestic politics and exacerbating inter-ethnic conflicts ahead of the 2010 Constitutional Referendum and the 2012General elections. Kenya’s external partners must now maintain total neutrality or risk being caught up in the murky politics of Kibaki succession.

The report concludes that de-politicizing the restoration of the Mau complex and other water towers in the country remains the most viable option of forging meaningful partnerships to rehabilitate the endangered forests, mitigate inter-community conflicts and safeguard the livelihoods of thousands of people who are dependent on Mau forests from Kenya, Uganda,Tanzania, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi to Egypt. Protecting and restoring the Mau ecosystem and all water towers requires various measures by the Coalition Government, international community and other stakeholders at various levels:

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