Sunday, January 07, 2018

Conservation Refugees

In a case that illustrates tensions between indigenous people's land rights and conservation projects, the Sengwer, a tribe living in the forests of western Kenya, say they have faced a fresh round of evictions by Kenyan authorities to pave the way for a European Union-funded project to protect water catchment areas in the region. Some 100 Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards started evicting Sengwer people from the Embobut forest on Dec. 29, activists said.

"The approach of KFS is conservation without people," Clement Lenachuru, a commissioner at National Lands Commission of Kenya.

Amnesty International wrote to Kenya's environment ministry this week with reports it had received from Sengwer community members and local media that KFS guards burnt at least 15 huts, fired shots in the air and shot dead several animals. Amnesty said the December evictions were carried out despite a High Court injunction that forbids the eviction or arrest of Sengwer resident in the forest, pending the hearing of a court challenge to the legality of mass evictions carried out in 2014. The United Nations and the World Bank criticised the KFS in 2014 for forcibly evicting thousands of Sengwer from the forest by burning their homes, leaving many camped out by the roadside.

The Sengwer hunter-gatherers have fought with the government for more than five decades for the right to live in the Embobut forest in the Cherengany Hills from where they were first evicted by British colonialists in the 19th century. Sengwer community leaders called on the government to halt a six-year, 31 million euro ($37 million) programme, launched in June 2016 to protect Kenya's five water towers in the Mount Elgon and Cherangany ecosystems.

http://news.trust.org/item/20180105133547-92mmr/


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