Funding crisis hits Tana River conservation scheme

A US $7.1 million conservation project in Tana River District, eastern Kenya, has stalled after the lead financier opposed the displacement of some 600 families planned under the scheme.

"We came up with the idea of relocating the families, because we wanted them to move to a more permanent place. If you live in a protected area, that is not your land," an official of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), responsible for implementing the Tana River Primate Reserve Project (TRPRP) project, told IRIN on Monday.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) last month withdrew its US $6.2 million funding to the TRPRP, saying it did not support the resettlement of some 600 families from the reserve to lands some 30 to 40 km away. "It is a fundamental principle of ours that you do not boot out people to protect animals and plants. People who have been living in a particular environment for years have managed it well and have a right to remain there," the East African newspaper quoted a GEF spokesman, Hutton Archer, as saying on Monday.

Despite the funding hitch, the conservation body would continue with its plans to resettle the community away from the protected area, the KWS official said. Of the 600 families living in the reserve, 234 had agreed to be relocated under the resettlement scheme, she added. "We are still continuing with the programme, the land has been demarcated, and those who are ready to move can go and occupy it."

Located on the lower reaches of the Tana, Kenya's largest river, the TRPNR is considered to be located in the "last vestige of a riverine forest system found nowhere else in Kenya", and constitutes specialised habitats for two endangered primate sub-species - the Tana River Red Colobus and the Tana River Crested Mangabey, according to a 27 March 2001 KWS briefing. [For more information go to www.kws.org]

Human demands on the reserve, such as clearing of the Reserve for agriculture and felling large trees for boats, had contributed to a "rapid decline of biological resources", which in turn had endangered rare animal species living in the area, according to the KWS briefing.

"This means that clearing of the Reserve for agriculture, cutting large trees for boats, over-harvesting of forest products, cultivation along the river banks within the Reserve, burning and other activities which are destructive to the Reserve must be stopped," KWS said.

According to KWS, GEF - through the World Bank - had agreed to fund the resettlement of people who live within and around the Reserve, as part of efforts to conserve the rare primate species only found in the Reserve. Under the project - which began in 1997 - each of the families was to be allocated to a 15-acre plot of land, with housing and additional compensation, according to the KWS official. The programme also was to provide social amenities, such as schools and health centres, for the community at the new location.

The GEF decision was at odds with other financiers, including the World Bank, which had insisted that the primate conservation project would only succeed if the local community was moved from the area, according to the East African.

The World Bank had "advocated the relocation of the community out of the belief that this would be the best for the conservation of the two monkey species", the World Bank Tana River Project manager, Richard Kaguamba, was quoted as saying by the East African.

Pius Muriithi, Assistant Development Coordinator for the international nongovernmental organisation Caritas, told IRIN on Monday that the community initially resisted the resettlement plans, because they felt they had not been included in the conservation programme, despite having protected the environment.

KWS acknowledged that a number of promises for assisting local communities to develop in conjunction with the Reserve had been made, but had not been fulfilled. This had "led to an atmosphere of doubt and mistrust which serves the interests of neither local people, local government, the nation nor the international community".

"At the beginning, the community couldn't understand why they can't be made responsible for the primate reserve, which they have lived in for many years," Muriithi said. "The community has no problem protecting the environment, but it depends on how you explain to them the whole issue and how they are to benefit from the resettlement," he added.