Kenya:
Ogiek’s rights violated by climate change and by measures
to stop it
The Mau Complex –
the largest forest of Kenya – has been the ancestral home
of the Ogiek Community. Although extremely important in terms of
water catchment, micro-climate regulation and biological diversity,
the Mau forest has been regularly cleared for settlement and private
agriculture supported by official policies. Destruction of the
forest has undermined Ogiek’s rights to livelihood,
culture and even a future.
But they still had to suffer
more. Some years ago, cancellation by the government of all title
deeds issued in the Mau forest aimed at the eviction of more
than 100,000 Ogiek people living in the forest (see WRM Bulletins
Nº 94, 113) under the argument that of all people it was
them who destroyed the forest.
The grabbing trend continues.
A recent Survival International report (1), exposes how
“the world’s indigenous people, who have done the least
to cause climate change and are most affected by it are now having
their rights violated and land devastated in the name of attempts
to stop it.”
The report denounces the case
of Kenya, a country that this year has suffered severe droughts.
While the government tries to evict Ogiek hunter-gatherers, who
have lived sustainably in the Mau forest for hundreds of
years, it appeals to the international community for funding
to save the Mau forest citing climate change as “a key
motivation”.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga
blamed ‘rampant excess in the global and local mismanagement
of our environment” for the melting of ice caps on Mt Kenya
and the destruction of forests. He also announced that they were
willing to ‘reverse the ravages’ of global warming,
for example, with the government’s effort to save the Mau
Forest –evicting its ancestral inhabitants and guardians,
the Ogiek, who will be left homeless!
The report quotes Kiplangat
Cheruyot, of the Ogiek People’s Development Program saying: “Everyone
has been living in fear for the last month... People are crying
about the eviction. The government said it would spare no one.”
Eventually, the Ogiek, who
have proved to live in harmony with the forest for thousands
of years, who are the most affected by their forest homeland’s
destruction and who have not been responsible at all for climate
change, will be the one who will suffer most from measures that
are allegedly undertaken to stop climate change.
The case of the Ogiek in Kenya
is a clear showcase of how climate change and even the measures
to stop it are a matter of human rights. Along those lines the
demand of Climate Justice stands out as a necessary ingredient
of any true measure that deals with climate change.
(1) “The Most Inconvenient
Truth of All. Climate change and indigenous people”, 2009,
Survival International, http://tiny.cc/4HL7Y
