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Kenya: Maathai Calls for Tough Laws to Save the Habitat
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The Nation (Nairobi)
14 September 2007
Posted to the web 13 September 2007
Mugumo Munene
Nairobi
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai took her conservation campaign to Commonwealth lawyers asking them to draft laws to protect the environment from further destruction.
Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai is hugged by Lady Justice Mary Ang'awa after Prof Maathai's presentation on the final day of the 15th Commonwealth Lawyers' Conference at KICC , Nairobi, yesterday. Photo/CHRIS OJOW
Environmentalists often fought losing battles with land owners and private developers who encroach on water catchment areas when confronted with land title deeds that by law, cannot be revoked, Prof Maathai said.
Unscrupulous citizens
But Mr Justice Benjamin Kubo offered her free legal advice from the conference floor: "The battle was not lost because the Environment Management and Coordination Act contains clauses that provide a basis for legal redress.
"You may take your lamentations to the National Environment Management Authority," he said.
Mr Justice Kubo called for the deletion of the law that protects all title deeds held by unscrupulous citizens who acquire land illegally and have repeatedly used them as a legal shields.
"A first registration cannot be defeated even if it was acquired fraudulently. That statute should never be in our law books," said Mr Kubo.
Prof Maathai was speaking at the 15th Commonwealth Law Conference at KICC Nairobi attended by more than 1,400 judges, magistrates and advocates from 57 countries which closed yesterday.
She had referred to a case where she had fought "a losing battle" with a private developer in an affluent Nairobi suburb who had acquired a preserved area and now held a title deed.
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The acquired title deed, Prof Maathai said, made it almost impossible to recover the land. "The Act has a provision for the protection of wetlands and such-like areas."
Prof Maathai, who received a standing ovation said: "It is difficult to convince politicians to protect the environment because one way of pleasing voters is to give them forest land for cultivation.'
"Destruction of the environment is a direct affront to future generations. It is the trees that help to break down the carbon dioxide that we breath out and I recently learnt that it takes 10 trees to break down the carbon dioxide emitted by one individual."
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