Africanews There is a dire need to establish a body to coordinate issues on land and environment," Kenya Law Reform Commission official Catherine Munyao said. "The environment policy is scattered in 14 ministries and the Office of the president, which leads to confusion and failure to enforce protective laws, therefore in order to provide greater protection for the environment, it shall be necessary to enhance and modify enforcement mechanisms." She said this at a seminar on land , law, people and environment organised by a local Non-governmental organisation, The Kenya Energy and Environmental Organisation (KENGO). The seminar was held at UNEP headquarters , Nairobi from April 1-4 1996. In February 1995 more than 120 squatters from Lamaon farm in Kaptagat, Eldoret East had travelled in a convoy of five vehicles more than 200 km to Nakuru muninciple town, Rift Valley saying they believed that only the Head of State could solve their land problems.
"Our main intention was to see the Father of the Nation to present our grievances after exhausting all the avenues available," Malakwen Paul Kibet, the squatters spokesman was reported to have said. This is only one of the many controversies in the management and protection of public resources. Conflicting Laws During the proceedings of the KENGO seminar, Mr. Situma Mwichabe , a programme officer with KENGO presented a paper titled "Proposal for a comprehensive policy on land and land use in Kenya." The paper highlighted corruption and bureaucracy as having adversely affected land use in Kenya. He further said that laws in force are not in tune with current realities in Kenya. "We have legislation based on the English and Customary laws that are sometimes contradictory. Hence, most transactions are either of no legal effect or are actually illegal."
Mr. Mwichabe emphasised that the tradition al institutions of land administration had been systematically destroyed, leaving the public with no avenue for redress. He also called for a new law to introduce a ceiling on the amount of land one could own. Giving his contribution, Mzee Muhammed Masha, 65 who is a community leader from Likoni (Mombasa) insisted that the government should speed-up the review of legislation and implementation. He also reported cases of corruption and land grabbing saying that some big fish in the government, which he declined to name, had sub-divided and sold beach plots where these sub- division had blocked the public's access to the Indian ocean.
The participants learnt that despite the government's land protection policies, there was evidence of increased land degradation and therefore a need for an effective policy to protect cultural practices, guarantee security of tenure, consider biodiversity and the environment in relation to land use and research.
In this respect the public should be empowered to seek legal redress for land cases and that the policy should recognise women's land rights and incorporate community land courts. A bleak urban landscape Ms Loise Tula, 50, a head of delegates from South Nyanza and a community leader involved in mobilization of women in development reported that chiefs were sub-dividing and distributing a strip 100 kilometres long around lake Victoria .
"This is meant to be a community resource and we can't conceive how these Heads of villages got the mandate to share out the community's resources," she lamented. The seminar participants were glad to have the Attorney General Mr. Amos Wako who was invited as one of the guest speakers. Mr. Wako said that he was upset about the land grabbing mania which is on the increase because of the fact that laws governing land ownership are not comprehensive enough.
In all Kenyan towns there is a bleak urban landscape in which green open spaces - very necessary for a habitable environment - are all being turned, or have already been turned, into shopping malls, blocks of flats and godowns. Mr. Collins Wasike, 55, a retired soldier now a farmer from Samia , (Western Kenya) decried that all trust land had been grabbed and locals were not consulted before factories that polluted the environment were put up.
"Traditionally land belonged to the community. Today there is law which is not accessible to the rural people," he said. Big companies like Nzoia Sugar Factory, Webuye Paper Mills have been allocated trust land with no consultation from the local people. Consequently "sugarcane litters the whole area of the Nzoia River and the entire region has been polluted by affluence from the Nzoia Sugar Factory," Mr. Wasike reported . Mr. Wako announced that the government has prepared a National Environmental Action Plan and that his chamber was finalising a framework legislation on the environment and development.
He further said that the government was willing to improve laws governing land ownership and asked the workshop to deliver their recommendations and proposals to his office for consideration. "Two parallel governments?" At a tense moment, Mr. Wako was almost caught off guard by a question directed to him by Mzee Ali Kweli Mwakio, 65, a Miji Kenda elder (a local community in the coast region). Mzee Mwakio challenged Mr. Wako asking him if Kenya had two "parallel" governments. He gave the example of Kaya Forest (Kaya's are indigenous forests which are believed to be sacred by the local communities along the cost region). He said "One government proclaims the need to protect our forests while the other sub-divides them for the strong and mighty. Now which one should we owe allegiance?", he wondered. He therefore prompted Mr. Wako to order a probe on the Kenyan forests which has allegedly been grabbed by foreigners. In response, Mr. Wako named as a priority issue the need for a comprehensive review of the different land policies with a view to harmonising them. This will stop the quick loss of huge chunks of public land to unscrupulous individuals who exploit certain loopholes in the existing legislation. Finally, Mr. Wako described land as a "topic that can generate a lot of heat and emotions and where reason does not necessarily prevail." However, he noted that confusion had emerged as a result of conflict in customary land tenure practices and numerous governing acts.
Section 143 of the Registered Land Act states that "the first registration cannot be challenged on the ground of fraud or mistake." This Act has led to unscrupulous persons fraudulently taking property which belongs to others. The East African Standard, April, 3, a local newspaper, commented on the current trend of grabbing the public land by the politically-connected and economically influential as a prominent example of failure in leadership. "Instead of protecting the public resources of land from marauders, they have themselves become the marauders. Or worked in chummy cahoots with others as crooked as they. Our game wardens have turned poachers." The result of this state of affairs is a country in which public-utility land is now feared to be virtually extinct.
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