Socio-Economic Factors Influencing the Conservation of Cherang'any Forest in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya
Keywords:
Forest management, Indigenous Environmental Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge, Natural Resource Management (NRM)
Abstract
Globally, forests make up an approximately 30% of the world's total land area with an estimated 11% being traditionally managed production landscapes. Presently, Kenya forest cover is about 7.5% which is significantly smaller than the desired minimum of 10.0% land areas. Forest ecosystems face significant challenge from a combination of human – ecological factors arising from the confluence between the andropological and environmental factors. Due to the depletion in the forest cover in Kenya, the study examined the various socio-economic factors influencing the conservation of Cherang’any forest, Elgeiyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. The study targeted 343 individuals from 343 households from which 300 individuals were randomly sampled from the boundaries of the forest zone and purposively sampled 43 key informants. The study instruments comprised of observations, interviews and questionnaires. The qualitative data obtained from the study was analyzed thematically and used to develop a questionnaire from which quantitative data was drawn. Based on a Cronbach’s coefficient value ≥ 0.70, the questionnaire was considered reliable. The findings indicated that socio-political factors that are largely related to the historical colonial legacy of protectionist environmental policies have largely influenced the current conservation policy and this has led to communal conflict and ethnic identification with conservation. The study recommends that the Forest Conservation and Management Act of 2016 of Kenya, should help the Sengwer community in the establishment of Community Forest Associations. The research recommended a further inquiry into the influence of socio-economic variables on the low sense of forest ownership and management among local communities in Kenya.
References
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Lestari, S., Kotani, K., & Kakinaka, M. (2015). Enhancing voluntary participation in community collaborative forest management: A case of Central Java, Indonesia. Journal of environmental management, 150, 299-309.
Li, T. M. (2000). Locating indigenous environmental knowledge in Indonesia. Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives.
Muhumuza, M., & Balkwill, K. (2013). Factors affecting the success of conserving biodiversity in national parks: A review of case studies from Africa. International Journal of Biodiversity, 2013.
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Park, S. H., & Yeo-Chang, Y. (2021). Impact of Collaborative Forest Management on Rural Livelihood: A Case Study of Maple Sap Collecting Households in South Korea. Sustainability, 13(4), 1594.
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Prober, S. M., O'Connor, M. H., & Walsh, F. J. (2011). Australian Aboriginal peoples’ seasonal knowledge: a potential basis for shared understanding in environmental management. Ecology and Society, 16(2).
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Rammel, C., Stagl, S., & Wilfing, H. (2007). Managing complex adaptive systems—a co-evolutionary perspective on natural resource management. Ecological Economics, 63(1), 9-21.
Rantala, S., & German, L. A. (2013). Exploring village governance processes behind community-based forest management: legitimacy and coercion in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. International Forestry Review, 15(3), 355-367.
Rantala, S. E., Vihemäki, H., Swallow, B. M., & Jambiya, G. (2013). Who gains and who loses from compensated displacement from protected areas? The case of the Derema Corridor, Tanzania. Conservation and Society, 11(2), 97-111.
Sharma, D., Vergara-Asenjo, G., Cunampio, M., Cunampio, R. B., Cunampio, M. B., & Potvin, C. (2015). Genesis of an indigenous social-ecological landscape in eastern Panama. Ecology and Society, 20(4).
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Tenge, A. J., De Graaff, J., & Hella, J. P. (2004). Social and economic factors affecting the adoption of soil and water conservation in West Usambara highlands, Tanzania. Land Degradation & Development, 15(2), 99-114.
Turner, N., & Spalding, P. R. (2013). “We might go back to this”; drawing on the past to meet the future in Northwestern North American Indigenous communities. Ecology and Society, 18(4).
Wali, A., Alvira, D., Tallman, P., Ravikumar, A., & Macedo, M. (2017). A new approach to conservation: using community empowerment for sustainable well-being. Ecology and Society, 22(4).
Waller, D. M., & Reo, N. J. (2018). First stewards: ecological outcomes of forest and wildlife stewardship by indigenous peoples of Wisconsin, USA. Ecology and Society, 23(1):45
Walsh, F. J., Dobson, P. V., & Douglas, J. C. (2013). Anpernirrentye: a framework for enhanced application of indigenous ecological knowledge in natural resource management. Ecology and Society, 18(3).
Warren, P. S., Ryan, R. L., Lerman, S. B., & Tooke, K. A. (2011). Social and institutional factors associated with land use and forest conservation along two urban gradients in Massachusetts. Landscape and Urban Planning, 102(2), 82-92.
Wass, P.(1995) Kenya's Indigenous Forests Status, Management and Conservation. IUCN Forest Conservation Programme
Woodhouse, E., & McCabe, J. T. (2018). Well-being and conservation: diversity and change in visions of a good life among the Maasai of northern Tanzania. Ecology and Society, 23(1).
Wu, W., Li, Y., Hu, Y., Xiu, C., & Yan, X. (2018). Impacts of changing forest management areas on forest landscapes and habitat patterns in northeastern China. Sustainability, 10(4), 1211.
Youn, Y.-C.; Choi, J.; de Jong, W.; Liu, J.; Park, M.S.; Camacho, L.D.; Tachibana, S.; Huudung, N.D.; Bhojvaid, P.P.; Damayanti, E.K. & Othman, M. S. (2017). Conditions of forest transition in Asian countries. Forest Policy and Economics, 76, 14-24.
Barlett, J. E., Kotrlik, J. W., & Higgins, C. C. (2001). Organizational research: Determining appropriate sample size in survey research. Information Technology, Learning, and Performance Journal, 19(1), 43.
Berkes, F. (2004). Rethinking community‐based conservation. Conservation biology, 18(3), 621-630.
Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (2000). Rediscovery of traditional ecological knowledge as adaptive management. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1251-1262.
Bohensky, E. L., & Maru, Y. (2011). Indigenous knowledge, science, and resilience: What have we learned from a decade of international literature on “integration”? Ecology and Society, 16(4).
Bremer, L., Mandle, L., Trauernicht, C., Pascua, P., McMillen, H., Burnett, K., & Chock, P. (2018). Bringing multiple values to the table: assessing future land-use and climate change in North Kona, Hawaiʻi. Ecology and Society, 23(1).
Briggs, J. (2005). The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges. Progress in development studies, 5(2), 99-114.
Brondizio, E. S., Siqueira, A. D., Vogt, N., & Padoch, C. (2014). 27. Forest Resources, City Services: Globalization, Household Networks, and Urbanization in the Amazon Estuary. In The social lives of forests (pp. 348-361). University of Chicago Press.
Caillon, S., Cullman, G., Verschuuren, B., & Sterling, E. (2017). Moving beyond the human–nature dichotomy through biocultural approaches: including ecological well-being in resilience indicators. Ecology and Society, 22(4).
Campbell, M. O. N. (2005). Sacred Groves for forest conservation in Ghana's coastal savannas: assessing ecological and social dimensions. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 26(2), 151-169.
Cernea, M. M., & Schmidt-Soltau, K. (2003, September). National parks and poverty risks: Is population resettlement the solution. In World Parks Congress (pp. 1-31).
Cox, P. A., & Elmqvist, T. (1994). Ecocolonialism and indigenous knowledge systems: village controlled rainforest preserves in Samoa. Pacific Conservation Biology, 1(1), 6-13.
Daniel, C. J., Ter-Mikaelian, M. T., Wotton, B. M., Rayfield, B., & Fortin, M. J. (2017). Incorporating uncertainty into forest management planning: Timber harvest, wildfire and climate change in the boreal forest. Forest Ecology and Management, 400, 542-554.
Desta, A., & Smithson, S. (2016). Indigenous knowledge in the context of natural resource management: an information systems perspective.
Durie, M. (2004). Understanding health and illness: research at the interface between science and indigenous knowledge. International journal of epidemiology, 33(5), 1138-1143.
Finn, S., Herne, M., & Castille, D. (2017). The value of traditional ecological knowledge for the environmental health sciences and biomedical research. Environmental health perspectives, 125(8), 085006.
Fisher, E. (2002). Forced resettlement, rural livelihoods and wildlife conservation along the Ugalla River in Tanzania. Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development. New York: Berghahn Books, 119-141.
Foncha, J. N., & Ewule, D. M. (2020). Community Forest Management: A Strategy for Rehabilitation, Conservation and Livelihood Sustainability: The Case of Mount Oku, Cameroon. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 8(02), 1.
Ford, J., & Martinez, D. (2000). Traditional ecological knowledge, ecosystem science, and environmental management. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1249-1250
Gómez-Baggethun, E., Corbera, E., & Reyes-García, V. (2013). Traditional ecological knowledge and global environmental change: research findings and policy implications. Ecology and society: a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability, 18(4).
Government of Kenya (2016). The Forest Conservation and Management Act of 2016. Government Printer, Nairobi
Government of Kenya (2010). The Constitution of Kenya 2010. Government printers, Nairobi
Government of Kenya (2016). National Environmental Policy 2013. Government Printer, Nairobi
Gross-Camp, N. (2017). Tanzania’s community forests: their impact on human well-being and persistence in spite of the lack of benefit. Ecology and Society, 22(1).
Himmelfarb, D. (2006). Moving people, moving boundaries: the socio-economic effects of protectionist conservation, involuntary resettlement and tenure insecurity on the edge of Mt. Elgon National Park, Uganda. Agroforestry in Landscape Mosaics Working Paper Series. World Agroforestry Centre, Tropical Resources Institute of Yale
University, and The University of Georgia, 7.
Hughey, K., Jacobson, C., & Smith, E. (2017). A framework for comparing collaborative management of Australian and New Zealand water resources. Ecology and Society, 22(4).
Igoe, J. (2002). The Challenge to Community Conservation: A Case Study from Simanjiro, Tanzania. Conservation and mobile indigenous peoples: displacement, forced settlement, and sustainable development, 10, 77.
Islam, K. K., Rahman, G. M., Fujiwara, T., & Sato, N. (2013). People's participation in forest conservation and livelihoods improvement: experience from a forestry project in Bangladesh. International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management, 9(1), 30-43.
Kenrick, J. (2014). The case of the Cherangany Hills, Kenya - State Forest protection is forcing people from their lands Forest Peoples Programme,
Lambin, E. F., & Meyfroidt, P. (2011). Global land-use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(9), 3465-3472.
Lestari, S., Kotani, K., & Kakinaka, M. (2015). Enhancing voluntary participation in community collaborative forest management: A case of Central Java, Indonesia. Journal of environmental management, 150, 299-309.
Li, T. M. (2000). Locating indigenous environmental knowledge in Indonesia. Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives.
Muhumuza, M., & Balkwill, K. (2013). Factors affecting the success of conserving biodiversity in national parks: A review of case studies from Africa. International Journal of Biodiversity, 2013.
Obua, J., Banana, A. Y., & Turyahabwe, N. (1998). Attitudes of local communities towards forest management practices in Uganda: the case of Budongo forest reserve. The Commonwealth Forestry Review, 113-118.
Oldekop, J. A., Sims, K. R., Karna, B. K., Whittingham, M. J., & Agrawal, A. (2019). Reductions in deforestation and poverty from decentralized forest management in Nepal. Nature Sustainability, 2(5), 421-428.
Park, S. H., & Yeo-Chang, Y. (2021). Impact of Collaborative Forest Management on Rural Livelihood: A Case Study of Maple Sap Collecting Households in South Korea. Sustainability, 13(4), 1594.
Pásková, M. (2017, December). Local and indigenous knowledge regarding the land use and use of other natural resources in the aspiring Rio Coco Geopark. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 95, No. 5, p. 052018). IOP Publishing.
Persha, L., Agrawal, A., & Chhatre, A. (2011). Social and ecological synergy: local rulemaking, forest livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation Science 331(6024), 1606-1608.
Prober, S. M., O'Connor, M. H., & Walsh, F. J. (2011). Australian Aboriginal peoples’ seasonal knowledge: a potential basis for shared understanding in environmental management. Ecology and Society, 16(2).
Pyke, M., Toussaint, S., Close, P., Dobbs, R., Davey, I., George, K., Oades, D., Sibosado, D., McCarthy, P., Tigan, C., Angus, B., Riley, E., Cox, D., Cox, Z., Smith, B., Cox,
P., Wiggan, A. & Clifton, J. (2018). Wetlands need people: a framework for understanding and promoting Australian indigenous wetland management. Ecology and Society, 23(3).
Rammel, C., Stagl, S., & Wilfing, H. (2007). Managing complex adaptive systems—a co-evolutionary perspective on natural resource management. Ecological Economics, 63(1), 9-21.
Rantala, S., & German, L. A. (2013). Exploring village governance processes behind community-based forest management: legitimacy and coercion in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. International Forestry Review, 15(3), 355-367.
Rantala, S. E., Vihemäki, H., Swallow, B. M., & Jambiya, G. (2013). Who gains and who loses from compensated displacement from protected areas? The case of the Derema Corridor, Tanzania. Conservation and Society, 11(2), 97-111.
Sharma, D., Vergara-Asenjo, G., Cunampio, M., Cunampio, R. B., Cunampio, M. B., & Potvin, C. (2015). Genesis of an indigenous social-ecological landscape in eastern Panama. Ecology and Society, 20(4).
Singh, R. K., & Sureja, A. K. (2006). Community knowledge and sustainable natural resources management: learning from the Monpa of Arunachal Pradesh. TD: The journal for transdisciplinary research in Southern Africa, 2(1), 73-102.
Sirima, A. (2015). The Contribution of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Conservation of Enguserosambu Community Forest, Tanzania. (Doctoral dissertation, Clemson University).
Stephenson, J., Berkes, F., Turner, N. J., & Dick, J. (2014). Biocultural conservation of marine ecosystems: examples from New Zealand and Canada. Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, 13:257-265.
Tenge, A. J., De Graaff, J., & Hella, J. P. (2004). Social and economic factors affecting the adoption of soil and water conservation in West Usambara highlands, Tanzania. Land Degradation & Development, 15(2), 99-114.
Turner, N., & Spalding, P. R. (2013). “We might go back to this”; drawing on the past to meet the future in Northwestern North American Indigenous communities. Ecology and Society, 18(4).
Wali, A., Alvira, D., Tallman, P., Ravikumar, A., & Macedo, M. (2017). A new approach to conservation: using community empowerment for sustainable well-being. Ecology and Society, 22(4).
Waller, D. M., & Reo, N. J. (2018). First stewards: ecological outcomes of forest and wildlife stewardship by indigenous peoples of Wisconsin, USA. Ecology and Society, 23(1):45
Walsh, F. J., Dobson, P. V., & Douglas, J. C. (2013). Anpernirrentye: a framework for enhanced application of indigenous ecological knowledge in natural resource management. Ecology and Society, 18(3).
Warren, P. S., Ryan, R. L., Lerman, S. B., & Tooke, K. A. (2011). Social and institutional factors associated with land use and forest conservation along two urban gradients in Massachusetts. Landscape and Urban Planning, 102(2), 82-92.
Wass, P.(1995) Kenya's Indigenous Forests Status, Management and Conservation. IUCN Forest Conservation Programme
Woodhouse, E., & McCabe, J. T. (2018). Well-being and conservation: diversity and change in visions of a good life among the Maasai of northern Tanzania. Ecology and Society, 23(1).
Wu, W., Li, Y., Hu, Y., Xiu, C., & Yan, X. (2018). Impacts of changing forest management areas on forest landscapes and habitat patterns in northeastern China. Sustainability, 10(4), 1211.
Youn, Y.-C.; Choi, J.; de Jong, W.; Liu, J.; Park, M.S.; Camacho, L.D.; Tachibana, S.; Huudung, N.D.; Bhojvaid, P.P.; Damayanti, E.K. & Othman, M. S. (2017). Conditions of forest transition in Asian countries. Forest Policy and Economics, 76, 14-24.
Published
2023-04-05
How to Cite
Mang’ira, S., Koske, J., & Kerich, R. (2023, April 5). Socio-Economic Factors Influencing the Conservation of Cherang’any Forest in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. African Journal of Education,Science and Technology, 7(3), Pg 1-12. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2022/ajest.v7i3.829
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