www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

A wildlife expert has expressed fear that any development in molecular
science particularly those that strive to come up with new crop genes that
would make them more drought tolerant are eating into Kenya?s range lands
whose crop economic value he estimates at USD950 million year on years,
April 2007 by Henry Neondo.

According to Dr Mike Norton-Griffiths, a researcher ?every time a new gene
is discovered in a crop, at least five percent of Kenya?s arid and semi arid
lands, constituting 81 percent of Kenya?s land mass, disappears?. Speaking
at the International Livestock Research Institute recently, Dr Griffiths,
whose talk aimed at opening up for discussion some fundamental economic
changes on Kenya?s rangelands , including macro (globalisation) and micro
economic changes, impacts of developing urban markets, differential returns
to land use, conversion of rangeland to cultivation, intensification of
livestock production, rapid evolution of property rights and elimination of
wildlife, said ?it is increasingly becoming more appealing for nomads to
cultivate or offer their lands for cultivation than keep wildlife?.

As a result, he noted that there was a significant increase in the areas
under cultivation adding that livestock production is now more intense and
there is near total eradication of wildlife besides rapid evolution of
property rights from large parcels of land under group or communal ownership
to small parcels of land under private ownership. He said there was a clear
transformation from traditional nomadic pastoralism to a more sedentary,
agro-pastoralism with settled cultivation and livestock embedded within the
emerging agro-pastoral matrix. He said whereas an acre of onions would earn
an individual close to USD4000 per year or USD12, 000 per year if the same
was under irrigated banana, the same acreage will earn a land owner USD10 if
he decides to rent it out for wildlife purposes. He said based on crop
prices in the market today, the value of rangelands is worth USD950 million
per year if all the 81 percent were to be put on cultivation activities. And
were Kenya to intensify only livestock keeping in these lands, then per
year, the value of rangelands would be USD320 million. But it is worth only
USD4 million per year today as a result of activities of keeping wildlife.

But Dr. Griffiths said the process of transformation is cascading down the
rainfall gradient; progresses faster, and is more complete, in areas of
higher agricultural potential compared to areas of lower agricultural
potential; worse for wildlife conservationists, is the cascade could ?jump?
down the rainfall gradient where agricultural potential is high, e.g. along
rivers, and in swamps (Loitokitok basin). Dr. Griffiths said this process is
driven economically by macro- (national) and micro- (local) economic
changes, population growth, especially in urban areas and marked
differentials in the returns to agricultural, livestock and wildlife
production. He said expansion of both international and domestic (primarily
urban) markets, real gains in producer prices, ever increasing opportunities
for off-farm jobs and investment, wider availability and choice of goods and
services are the macro-factors that are driving this process while improved
market and transport networks, improved information networks on market
conditions (e.g. mobile phones) transforms price taking, improved access to
financial service as well as improved and wider availability of technology.
He said in mid 1970s to mid 1990s, the statistics from the Central Bureau of
Statistics indicated that the population growth in the ASAL Districts was
3.1 percent per year and could be higher currently.

But the changes are more affected by the population growth in the rest of
the country, especially in urban areas. This has created burgeoning markets
for agricultural and livestock products of every higher quality. But the
researcher said that this change is not occurring without losses. He said
that for every two percent loss of land holding, driven by land subdivision,
there is a loss of 0.4 percent of biodiversity. Griffiths said sub division
of land in rangelands, with rainfall that is incapable of supporting
agriculture, are driven by security of tenure, political and/or economic
elites, conservation NGOs wishing to expand extent of protected areas and
from in-migration. He said further there is dilution of the value of
communal resources following population growth and in-migration and the
desire by nomads to capture benefits of agricultural, livestock or wildlife
production at the household level rather than through local institutions
(e.g. group ra?ch committees, ranch management committees).

This follows increases in the value of pastoral lands, especially in such
areas as Narok, Kajiado and Machakos and the fact that it is easier to raise
capital for development. Meanwhile, the ministry of tourism and wildlife
appointed a committee to review wildlife policy and legislation is
fine-tuning the draft copy of the proposed policy. According to the Minister
in charge of wildlife, lack of a national land use policy and policy
guidelines has frustrated plans to devolve wildlife conservation and
management to the nomadic land owners and local communities thus leading to
wildlife failing to be seen as a resource base for socio-economic
development. ?This has led to non-realisation of the full potential of most
Kenyans in wildlife conservation and management and the noted increase in
human and wildlife conflict?, said the minister.

[www.africasciencenews.org]