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Kenya: Wekesa Defends Shamba System
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
24 April 2008
Posted to the web 23 April 2008
Evelyne Ogutu
Nairobi
The controversial shamba system will be spread across several districts. But squatters who have invaded gazetted forestland will be evicted.
In a media brief yesterday after a handing over ceremony in his offices, Forestry and Wildlife minister, Dr Noah Wekesa, said the shamba system could not be scrapped.
Wekesa said the revamped Kenya Forest Service needed to collaborate with local communities to ensure that forests were adequately managed.
But while supporting the system, the minister said: "The system was misused in the 1990s but now we want to educate people who reside around forest land on the important of conservation."
The system, which was enforced in the new Forest Act of 2007, was renamed Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS).
Already more than 16,000 hectares of forest are currently under this new scheme.
Wekesa said the Government could not plant trees in the depleted forests hence the need to have people who live near forests.
"Reforestation is a very expensive exercise and hence the need to involve the community through the new scheme," said Wekesa.
The minister, however, said that people who had encroached into forestland would be evicted.
He cited Mau Forest where hundreds of squatters have moved in, noting there was need to protect the five water towers under threat.
At the same time, Wekesa said there was need to provide more funds to the Kenya Forest Service before it could become self-sustaining.
The minister noted that the service, just like the Kenya Wildlife Service, could not operate without money from the Treasury.
The shamba system, which environmentalist have roundly condemned, is currently being practiced in 15 districts.
Nobel Peace laureate, Prof Wangari Maathai, has been campaigning against the system, terming it a factor in the depletion of forest cover.
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Kenya is classified among the countries with low forest cover. Currently, forestland covers only 1.8 per cent of the country, which is below the internationally required 10 per cent.
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