Kenya is planning to erect thousands of kilometers of electric fencing around its key national parks and to double the number of armed guards to protect water sources and stop impoverished people felling trees, as the effects of climate change become more serious.
A drought that has left more than 5 million people without food this year, combined with changing weather patterns and rapid population growth, threatens a triple catastrophe within 10 years, said Julius Kipng’etich, director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the government’s paramilitary organization responsible for managing 26 national parks and their wildlife.
“The long rains have failed for the first time. The implications for food security and water scarcity and energy are profound. Kenya will face these three crises in the next 10 years without a doubt. If we carry on the way we are going, in 20 years the consequences will be horrific,” Kipng’etich said.
Five of Kenya’s national parks provide drinking water and hydroelectric power for almost 80 percent of the country as well as being major centers of wildlife. But several have been invaded by squatters after former president Daniel arap Moi gave politicians land in forested parks in the 1980s.
The 15,000 people who now live illegally in the heavily forested 400,000 hectares of Mau park in the west of Kenya have cut down nearly 104,000 hectares of trees in 15 years.
The government has pledged to evict them, but has so far failed to take action. Other parks have been invaded by people taking cattle to graze or by charcoal industries.
The Mau is the largest forest in Kenya and is considered critical for safeguarding water supplies there as well as in neighboring Sudan and Uganda. Millions of people depend upon the 12 rivers that flow from the mountainous area, providing water for the tea, livestock and energy industries. Other forested parks provide water for the capital, Nairobi, and hydroelectric power stations. Trees are an essential part of the water cycle as they promote the formation of clouds — cutting them down inevitably leads to lower rainfall.
Last week the wildlife service said it planned to double the number of armed guards in Kenyan parks over the next five years and was studying whether to put electric fences around Mount Kenya, the Mau forest, Mount Elgon and the Cherangani hills. The model would be a 400km fence that has been nearly completed around the Aberdare mountain range by the Kenya-based conservation group Rhino Ark.
“Kenya is destroying itself. The population has reached an unsustainable level. We are killing ourselves slowly by destroying the forests and settling there. Destruction of the Mau is like dancing with death. We should see environmental destruction as a greater threat than anything else,” Kipng’etich said.
Environmentalists foresee a vicious circle where human and wildlife conflicts will escalate with climate change as east African rains fail and people are forced to enter protected areas in search of food for animals and water. Destruction of the forests will devastate wildlife and further reduce water supplies to Kenya’s cities.
“Once you have people in the forest, you cannot control what they do. Kenya depends on these forests. You cannot solve the problems of food and water by allowing poor people to go into the forest. People are undermining the future of Kenya by growing food in the forest,” said the Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel peace prize winner, Wangari Maathai.
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