Court halts logging as CS defends Ruto move

The Ministry of Environment would be forced to rethink its strategy after the High Court issued orders blocking an Executive Order that lifted the ban on logging.

The details emerged as the government insisted the ongoing destruction of forests in many parts of the country has nothing to do with the recent lifting of the ban by President William Ruto.

Environment CS Soipan Tuya said the lifting of the restriction only applies to commercial forests, and not indigenous plantations, as being witnessed.

“We have a total of two million hectares of gazetted forests in this country. The commercial plantations are only 150,000 hectares or about six per cent of the total gazetted forest,” Tuya said.

However, on Wednesday, the High Court ruled there had  been no public participation and continued the ban for 90 days.

On February 24, 2018, the state imposed a 90-day ban on logging, which was later extended to November 24.

The ban was re-imposed a number of times to facilitate sector reforms. It covered public and community plantation forests.

Private commercial forests and trees grown for timber or wood on private farms were excluded from the ban.

On July 2, the state lifted the ban and harvesting was set to continue for the next 45 days.

The move generated outrage by those who said the ban should continue and called ending the prohibition ill-informed.

The aim of  the ban was to increase  Kenya's tree cover and improve the  environment, including water supply. 

Critics said lifting the ban would increase deforestation.

The Law Society of Kenya challenged lifting the ban, saying there was no public participation about such an important issue before the prohibition was removed.

"Orders are granted staying the government directive on the revocation of the Gazette notices previously issued for degazettement of forest areas/designating areas as forests and the re-introduction of the shamba system," Justice Oscar Angote ruled.

The court also barred the state from granting logging licenses and permits.

Angote directed that the application and orders be served upon the parties, for a hearing on August 14.

But appearing before the Senate plenary on Wednesday, CS Tuya said that the ban has crippled the economy and condemned millers to massive losses.

“We have a demand for timber products in this country. We have a market for wood, that is doing extremely poorly. We are doing importation right, left and centre even for toothpicks, and that has the implications to the economy of this country” the CS said.

“It has an implication to the job creation. It has an implication for how we want to build our country. Commercial forestry sector is one such sector that we must recast, which is a big contributor to our GDP,” she added.

The CS said out of the 150,000 hectares of the gazetted commercial forest, only 5,000 hectares can be harvested every year.

She added that the state has a replanting programme to replace those felled.

“Logging ban was imposed in 2018 and it has caused colossal loses to our saw millers in its country. It has caused a huge degradation of our forestry component of our economy,” she said.

Meanwhile, the CS revealed planned ‘punitive’ measures to curb pollution of the Nairobi River and its tributaries.

She said the state plans to introduce polluter pay principal that will see manufacturers, industries and any other person who pollutes the rivers fined.

“For those people that are not taking responsibility for the waste that they produce in the process of production, we are going to take action under the polluter pay principal. People will have to pay for their waste,” she said.

Tuya disclosed that her ministry was developing an elaborate strategy to clear and stop further pollution of the heavily polluted Nairobi River.

“There have been actions that have been taken in the past but very disjointed, very ad-hoc in nature but we are setting the stage for initiatives that would be sustainable,” she said.