The sun is rising over the beautiful town of Isiolo as Mama Khadija sits outside her semi-permanent house on the outskirts of Merti.
Her energies and gusto are failing due to her advanced age. She gazes in the sky as if in search of answers to something that has been disturbing her for a while.
Mama Khadija is not sure if in the next one year, she will still be grazing on this vast communal land. Her neighbour’s land in Samburu county has been fenced off by Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), who are now targeting the land she has been living in for the past 54 years.
In the faraway county of Turkana, intense conflicts between NRT, its agents and local communities led to the expulsion of NRT, with the county government taking over the management of community conservancies. Some residents in Isiolo are hoping to follow in the footsteps of their fellow pastoralists.
“Community-based conservation greatly affects pastoralists’ access to resources, their security, land rights, representation, their cultures and heritage,” Adan Diba said at an elders’ meeting.
NRT denies the allegations. Other residents and some leaders support the conservancies.
Halima Kampicha, 50, is among the proponents. She stood against the elders. With anger and a rising voice, she tells them that the community participated before the NRT decided to put up a conservancy in the area.
“Since they (NRT) came, security has been beefed up, our children have been employed and they have even built a health facility,” Halima says. “These elders are being used by politicians to propagate false information.”
NRT is a conservancy firm that has been operating in northern Kenya since 2004. They have 39 community conservancies in the entire Northeastern and Coastal parts of the country, covering 42,000 acres or more than 10 million hectares (that is, about 8 per cent of the total land surface in Kenya).
These include five in Isiolo county: Biliqo-Bulesa, Leparua, Nakuprat-Gotu, Nasuulu and Oldonyiro community conservancies. Two more have been proposed in Chari and Cherab wards.
A fact-finding mission takes us to the meeting of elders and professionals in a remote corner of the county. The noisy urban life we encountered in Isolo town — with its ultramodern buildings, international airport and booming commercial activities — fades to oblivion on the gruelling, five-hour journey to Merti 140km away in the same vast county.
While Isiolo was entrenched in the nation’s Vision 2030 as a resort town, the bulk of the county is sparsely populated and lacks basic amenities like schools, hospitals and roads. You only get to meet a person after about two hours’ drive.
We are not going to allow NRT to fence off any part of our land before we register it. We need to get title deeds
TAKING A STAND
At midday, the sweltering heat is palpable. It is 37 degrees Celsius. The windy and dusty weather does not dampen the spirits of the elders, both male and female, who are seated in a semi-circle under an acacia tree.
They have been meeting every so often to discuss the way forward after NRT activities in the area threatened their way of life. The tension is evident. Untouchable, but abundant. Everyone spoke with unmistakable anger.
For hours, we listened to community members, who took turns narrating the harrowing experiences the Borana community have gone through at the hands of well-trained rangers and raiders from the Samburu community whom they accused NRT of arming. This has been going on since 2006, when the Biliqo-Bulesa Conservancy was formed.
The residents say NRT has been pushing for the establishment of conservancies in the Chari and Cherab wards of Merti and Garbatula subcounties. This is despite the fact that communities living in these areas are nomadic pastoralists.
Today, the meeting is attended by professionals, among them lawyers, teachers and activists. Ismael Huka is 60 years old. He is emphatic in his stand on the activities of NRT.
“We are not going to allow NRT to fence off any part of our land before we register it. We need to get title deeds,” he says as thick sweat trickles down his face.
“This land is our natural resource. As a community, we own it.” He is quick to add that their ancestors coexisted peacefully with wild animals and the community has been conserving the environment ever since.
We don’t know what we shall do [if more land is fenced off to create new conservancies]. We are unable to fight them
GAPS IN CONSERVATION MODEL
Community-based conservation has expanded rapidly across northern Kenya, driven by huge funding from foreign, private and governmental agencies. However, a number of challenges have arisen. This is partly due to the sheer size of the geographical area under ‘community conservation’, and the application of a single conservation model across a region that has diverse ethnicity as well as geographically and ecologically varied terrains.
Isiolo county has 25,336 sq km. Its five conservancies occupy 5,288 sq km in total, while it also has three national game reserves that take up another 537 sq km.
The challenges arising have been downplayed and the success of the initiatives emphasised by the proponents of the single conservancy model, says security expert Abdulahi Boru.
“There have been limited efforts to establish the size of land under this model of conservation, the impact of ongoing conservation efforts on the livelihoods of pastoralists and how the conservation activities affect the movement of pastoralists and their livestock, security, access to pasture, water and other resources,” he said.
He says it is important to understand how communities are involved in setting up and managing community wildlife conservancies, along with the benefits and inherent challenges in the conservancies. Other factors to be considered are how the grand conservancy initiative has shaped the local economy, the prevailing security scenario, the integration of pastoralist communities as well as the governance structures created to run them.
Adan Diba is the chair of Peace and Security in Merti subcounty and an elder. He is among the attendees of today’s meeting.
Diba said surveys have found the proliferation of small arms in northern Kenya. The area also suffers official neglect and occasional inter-community conflicts that are mainly driven by competition for resources, which becomes worse during droughts.
Recently, though, the region has seen an unprecedented expansion of infrastructure and an upsurge of conservation and tourism activities. This has resulted in the loss of grazing land and wildlife habitats.
In Isiolo county, the development of a resort city, the Lapsset project and ‘growth area’ have all increased land prices and escalated speculation and subdivision as investors seek to benefit.
I ask Diba what they will do if NRT goes ahead and fences off the land they are against. His face sags and his cheeks sink further. “We don’t know what we shall do. We are unable to fight them,” he says.
LAND GRABBING IN DISGUISE?
The reason there is a conflict between the Borana and the Samburu, who are their neighbours, is because NRT took a large chunk of their grazing land, Diba said. They are forced to come to Isiolo to graze. He has witnessed many of his friends die during the conflict.
Fellow security expert Boru added that the conservancies are mainly in remote places, where the government has little or no footprint.
“The NRT has been trying to fill the void by altering and adding to its initial conservation mandate a number of activities, including security, prevention of cattle rustling, meeting the needs of the communities and livestock marketing,” he said.
However, there have been a lot of complaints from the indigenous communities, who accuse NRT of violating their community land rights and fundamental human rights. They accuse the organisation of inspiring and facilitating inter-community conflicts and increasingly imposing restrictions on how members of communities exploit the natural resources found on their lands.
NRT has been accused of committing human rights violations against the communities for refusing to establish a conservancy on their community lands.
GalachaWario is a victim of inter-communal feuds. In February this year, while grazing his sheep, he was attacked by Samburu herders and left for dead. He lost 200 sheep and is barely able to fend for his two wives and 12 children.
He says since NRT started its activities in the area, cases of insecurity have escalated, with arms being found in the wrong hands. According to media reports, more than 50 people have been killed in conflicts between the neighbouring communities.
The lack of transparency and adequate information regarding the manner in which these conservancies are established and managed adds to the anxiety of pastoralist communities. Pastoralists in the area have been victims of various incidents of land grabbing in the past and, therefore, view conservancies as a trojan horse that will lead to further annexation of their pastoral rangelands.
Community model conservancies were entrenched in law following the enactment of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act in 2013. They were championed by a group of conservation NGOs and personalities, who state that 70 per cent of Kenya’s wildlife is found outside national parks and reserves, and that the survival of protected areas largely depends on the preservation of vast habitats and lands held by communities and private landowners.
The Borana community (Borana, Sakuye and Gabra) live on community lands they jointly and indivisibly own. They carry out nomadic pastoralism as a way of life in the areas of Chari and Cherab in Merti subcounty, Isiolo county.
Osman Abedi, 63, the chairman of the Council of Elders, says since the NRT started its activities, there has been an increase of illegal guns. He agrees that he attended one of the seminars led by NRT on conservancy. NRT was to come up with a report on the pros and cons of the conservancy but has not done so, he says. He also blames the leadership of the area for the current problems.
Boru added Isiolo is a victim of circumstances. “Kenya’s Vision 2030, which identified Isiolo as a strategic location in the hydrocarbon economy of the region, combined with the 2010 Constitution, which led to the devolution of power and resources, have thrust Isiolo county, a once sleepy and neglected former garrison town, into the El Dorado of Kenya’s future development,” he said.
He is, however, afraid that Isiolo’s potential, if not judiciously managed, could turn the county into the future axis of natural resource-based conflict, especially in the large-scale irregularly acquired land by private corporations and individuals under the guise of community wildlife conservation.
He says the consequences of what happens in Isiolo will likely spill over into other parts of northern Kenya and northern Rift Valley. Like other parts of northern Kenya, Isiolo lagged behind the rest of the country in economic development because of the government’s economic planning policies contained in Sessional Paper No 10 of 1965.
“African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya” created a dichotomy between low- and high-potential areas of the country. Isiolo was considered a low-potential area and thus received limited government investment.
Osman is an ardent activist; he has been at the forefront of organising protests against NRT activities. He says the current push for the establishment of more conservancies in Merti subcounty seeks to defeat the ongoing processes of community land registration by the community.
“This is because registration of community land will grant the community absolute ownership of its land to the exclusion of external parties, such as NRT,” he said.
NRT does not have a mandate over land. Community conservancies are purely run by communities. Our mandate is to help them in conserving the resources
ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING?
Since the early 2000s, there has been an upsurge of conservancies across the pastoral counties of Baringo, Samburu, Turkana, Pokot, Laikipia, Isiolo, Marsabit and Garissa. This has seen a rise in the involvement of communities, and especially those inhabiting wildlife dispersal areas, in the national conservation programme. This was inspired by the need to preserve ecosystems and wildlife habitats that happen to be on lands owned and held by local communities.
Isiolo South MP Hassan Odha and counterpart Woman Representative Rehema Jaldesa have vowed to stop any attempt by NRT to annex their land. They said the land belongs to the community and that any attempt to take it by force is tantamount to human rights abuse.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights issued an advisory on the Isiolo County Community Conservancies Bill. The commission recommends that the county assembly halts any further debate on the Bill until the land is registered under the Community Lands Act.
Halkano Abdullahi is a lawyer. He has been working with the community for the past year. He says he and his fellow professionals have been creating awareness so the community gets to know their rights.
The Council of Elders and the professionals petitioned the county assembly against the Conservancy Bill that was aimed at disinheriting the community of their land.
Contacted on phone, NRT chief executive Tom Lalaampa dismissed the allegations against the organisation.
“There is a misconception against NRT. There is a need for the community to be sensitised. Many people don’t understand. NRT does not have a mandate over land. It is the community which applies to join NRT for a conservancy,” he said.
“We receive so many applications from the communities who want to join NRT and not the other way round.”
Lalampaa, who has been at the helm of the conservancy the last two years, said they have never grabbed any land. “When we receive applications from the community that wants to join us, we have a board that skims through them, then we take them to the county government for the process to start.”
The CEO also denied the alleged human rights violations and claims of arming neighbouring communities. Lalampaa said communities in Samburu have understood and accepted to work with NRT. “Community conservancies are purely run by communities,” he said. “Our mandate is to help them in conserving the resources.”
As the sun sets, Mama Khadija, who is covered in a hijab, vows that NRT will only take the land over her dead body. She will resist any mechanisms used to coerce her to allow the activities of NRT to go on.
Shisia Wasilwa is a multimedia journalist and a communications expert
Edited by T Jalio
