By David Njagi
KIRIMA, Kenya (AlertNet) Â? In the dispute between the farmers of Kirima village, and the environmentalists who for the last decade have been drawn to this pastoral hamlet on the west side of the Aberdare mountain range, it is never clear who is winning.
If you ask 50-year-old Pauline Wambui why she persists in tilling land that has been set aside as a forest reserve, she frowns and wonders aloud: "How do I feed my family if I donÂ?t farm?"
If you ask Lilian Muchungi of the Green Belt Movement why her organization is furious with the deforestation around Kirima village, she retorts: "Can't you see Lake Olbollosat is drying up?"
And so a raging battle continues between farmers who have for the last two decades enjoyed access to land as part of local political patronage and an equally obstinate environmental movement, each determined to claim as theirs the ailing terrain around Mt. Satima, the highest peak in the Aberdare range.
The good news is, both sides now agree that reforesting at least part of the denuded hillsides is vital to protecting the lake, curbing the impacts of climate change and helping ensure the safety of residents threatened by deadly mudslides like the one that struck neighboring Uganda this week.
Starting in the mid-1990s, the forest here was illegally sold to loggers and sawmills who stripped the land bare of trees. Farmers later moved in. Today the land is largely depleted of fertility and has lost much of its ability to help regulate local weather patterns.
BUREAUCRACY PART OF PROBLEM
Local authorities put the wholesale destruction of the forest down to bureaucratic red tape, with loggers and farmers moving in before the long process of formally demarcating the land as a forest reserve could be completed - despite a 1997 petition by Nobel Peace Prize winner and greenbelt movement founder Wangari Maathai demanding the land be restored to public ownership.
Now, on the southern side of the escarpment, 43 square kilometers of land has been hived off for farming, and to the north farmers are cultivated another 15 square kilometers, dramatically reducing what was to have been a broad ecological buffer zone for Lake Olbollosat, central Kenya's only highland lake.
"Most of the land around the escarpment has not been gazetted" or had its protected status formally published by the state, said John Karari, secretary of the Olborosat Forest Community Association. "This is why it was becoming hard to contain the encroachments into the forest reserve."
The problems deforestation might bring became urgently clear in 2004 when villager John Maina rose up at dawn one day to find a mudslide sweeping toward Kirima.
"It had been raining heavily that evening but the rain had subsided when I stepped out of the house," 41-year-old Maina recalled. "I heard a strange noise that sounded like low humming coming from the top of the escarpment. I decided to make my way uphill to find out what was making the noise."
What he saw was a mudslide gliding downhill towards the village.
"I panicked but managed to collect myself and wake up most of the villagers, half of whom were still asleep," Maina said. "Luckily we escaped and managed to rescue most of our livestock."
MUDSLIDES, HAIL THREATEN CROPS
But the crops and houses at the village could not be saved. Crops similarly could not be rescued when last year an unusual heavy hailstorm struck the village, leaving over 60 acres of land pummeled by giant hail stones.
For Maina, who is today an active member of the Lake Olbollosat Environmental Conservation Network, life at Kirima had begun to feel like some sort of curse.
"When it was not raining heavily, a long dry spell would ensue," he said. "This meant we would experience repeated incidences of crop failure."
But it was the rapid drying up of Lake Olbollosat, whose water table is understood to be fed from the Mt. Satima ecosystem, that finally spurred the sleepy village into action.
More than 400 households in the community depend on the lake's water, said George Njenga, a district forest officer in the area, as does much of the regionÂ?s wildlife, from fish and birds to hippos and waterbuck.
Starting last year, villagers began planting tree seedlings in deforested areas as part of a Green Belt Movement pilot program to measure the effectiveness of agro-forestry in forest reserves that cannot be entirely returned to nature because of legal controversies.
The program encourages farmers to plant trees on bits of land that are traditionally not sown with crops, including boundary lines and earth mounds that accumulate out of soil erosion prevention measures such as terracing.
Also, under Kenya's so-called "shamba system," farmers who tend tree saplings on state-owned forest land can in turn win permission to inter-crop perennial food crops until the forest canopy closes up.
The effort aims to see a total of 25,000 seedlings of indigenous forest species planted while not interfering with the community's farming activities So far about 50 hectares have been reforested, officials said.
David Njagi is an environmental writer based in Nairobi.
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