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Karura Forest, Nairobi’s iconic urban green haven, has recently become the focus of a management dispute between the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and Friends of Karura Forest (FKF). The disagreement stems from the KFS’s August 29th announcement that all payments for forest access and services would henceforth be made exclusively through the government’s eCitizen platform. While the KFS maintains that the change aims to enhance transparency and accountability, the FKF argues it undermines the joint management framework that has successfully guided Karura’s conservation for over a decade.
The Karura Forest standoff reflects the neoliberal interventions that have shaped devolved forest governance, introducing models like Participatory Forest Management (PFM), Joint Forest Management (JFM), Community-Based Forest Management (CBF), and Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). While these frameworks promise shared responsibility between the state and local communities, in practice, they often blur the lines of power and accountability. What is called “co-management” ends up reproducing unequal relationships, leaving communities entangled in systems over which they have little or no real control. We argue in this op-ed that we are producing conservation spectators as informed by the framings of Michel Foucault on subjectivity and power, Arun Agrawal, who has demonstrated how governmentality produces environmental subjects, and Manasi Anand and Mari Mulyani highlight the production of conservation subjects.
For two decades, these neoliberal interventions have been fashioned in a manner that informs natural resources governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. The interventions are masked and covertly aid the continued control of forests by state and non-state actors. The language of “co-management” sounds progressive, but it hides a patron-client system that leaves local communities trapped in a web of dependency and disenfranchisement.
In Kenya, the language of “co-management” sounds inclusive and democratic; it suggests that local communities share power with the state and conservation non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in managing forests. In practice, it’s a paradox; communities are invited to the table but are not handed the “menu”. The system remains hierarchical and paternalistic – an echo of colonial forestry administration masquerading as partnership. Local communities are “consulted” while decisions have already been made elsewhere.
Forest management history in Kenya: How did we get here?
To understand today’s predicament, we must revisit the roots of forest management in Kenya. The country’s forest management history is linked to the pre-colonial and colonial periods, and the transition to a sovereign nation. We begin this section by stating that the Western conceptualisation of forest management in Kenya is informed by how nature conservation values evolved in the Western conservation context and cascaded down to inform Kenya’s forest management.
In his 1984 paper on Kenya forestry under the British colonial Administration, 1895-1963, Thomas Ofcansky states, “Prospects for striking a balance between forest protection, industrial and agricultural expansion grew dim as larger amounts of territory came under cultivation and land and timber needs for schools, roads, hospitals, towns, and other social advancements grew.” Ofcansky further observes that before the British occupation of Kenya in 1895, there was significant closed forest cover. A Scottish adventurer, Joseph Thomson, toured the Masailand in 1883 and spoke of trees in Southern Kenya. The challenge then was that at that time, conservation (as defined from a Western epistemological framework) was not necessarily an inherent concept. Other studies show that Kenya’s forest depletion began before the colonial period due to shifting cultivation, pastoralism, disease, war, and famine.
In 1902, the colonial government established the Forest Department, where CF Elliot, a former official of the Indian Forest Service, was appointed to the newly created position of Conservator of Forests. Elliot established the Forest Department office in Nairobi. “… and began introducing exotic tree species – including two species of pine, for experimental plantations. These precedents – the Forest Department, reforestation with exotics and protection of the forest reserves – served as the backbone of Kenya’s forest policy throughout the colonial period”. In 1957, the colonial government issued an ambitious white paper to create forest reserves sufficient to “maintain all needs for the territory in timber and other forest products (…) under a fully developed national economy”.
Towards the end of the colonial period, the colonial powers had restored a major portion of the closed forest that had existed in 1895, further reserving hill catchments and initiating several afforestation programmes. As Kenya prepared for independence, the colonial powers aided in establishing the forest training school in Londiani, in the then Rift Valley Province. Courses began in 1957 for African Forest Rangers; those who excelled were promoted to Assistant Foresters. However, despite these advances, Kenyanforests were still just 3 per cent of the landmass, and they could still not meet the needs of Kenyans before independence.
The era of the NGO and the rise of participation
Ofcansky foresaw this era:
“The establishment of a national park system to protect rapidly diminishing wildlife also caused a serious conflict in many forest reserves, as foraging animals hampered afforestation and reforestation efforts. However, to help resolve these problems, the Republic of Kenya regularly employed British expatriates and Canadian Foresters, the latter in connection with the Canadian Overseas Assistance Programme. Canada also assisted with the training of Kenya’s foresters. In 1965, for example, Conservator of Forests J.B. Smart and Assistant Conservator J.D.O. Onyango completed an extensive five-week tour of Canadian forest centers in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec. Although the forestry problems of the two countries are vastly different. Canada, with its heavy dependence on the timber industry and its established forestry traditions, had much to teach the younger nation.”
By the late 1980s and 1990s, global environmentalism had brought in new money and a new language. This can perhaps be attributed to the Rio-1992 Earth Convention and the Brundtland Commission Report in 1987 on Sustainability. This may have bolstered earlier initiatives such as the 1986-1992 conservation initiative for ASFR (Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve), which began when the European Economic Community and Birdlife International funded research on the effects of logging and forest degradation on bird communities.
In addition, the United Kingdom Development Assistance funded the Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation Program (KIFCON). The overall mission of the programme was “to promote and support the conservation of biodiversity, maintenance of ecological services and sustained productivity of the indigenous closed-canopy forests of Kenya”. This programme involved surveys of status and patterns of change in natural forests, initial piloting of new approaches to management, which involved community participation, and support to institutional strengthening and development for forest conservation and management. Meanwhile, in the same period, forest conservation was viewed as an alternative use of forest land in Kenya. This led to the establishment of tea buffer zones for forest conservation such as the Nyayo Tea Zone Development Corporation (NTZDC) which was established by presidential order in 1986 and the Act of Parliament of 1988, and was later reviewed by Legal Notice 30 of 2002.
Consequently, the above history informed the piloting of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) in the Arabuko Sokoke Forest in 1997. That eventually led to the establishment of the Forest Act 2005, which made Community Forest Associations a legal entity. This enabled the co-management of adjacent local communities as foreseen in Article 46, Sub-section (1): “A member of a forest community may, together with other members or persons resident in the same area, register a community forest association under the Societies Act.” Sub-section (2) qualifies the statement by stating, “An association registered under sub-section (1) may apply to the Director for permission to participate in the conservation and management of a state forest or local authority forest in accordance with the provisions of this Act.”
Devolution and the constitutional promise
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a proliferation of both British and Kenyan NGOs; the Hansard of the UK House of Commons records that, “The Overseas Development Administration is well regarded by many donors not only for the high quality of its own staff, but also for being able to call on the services of a wide range of British non-governmental organisations, academic institutions and the private sector, with whom we continue to work closely.”
As part of the KIFCON Programme, several NGOs in Kenya were funded to work on developing community engagement in forest management. This eventually led to the funding for the establishment of Community Forest Associations. However, a closer look reveals communities that were structurally and systemically constrained from participating in decision-making and having their knowledge integrated into the “co-management”. They were also denied access to the product with the highest commercial value – timber. The National Alliance of Community Forest Associations (NACOFA) brought a case against the co-management arrangement, arguing that KFS and the Government of Kenya failed to notify and consult CFAs. In its verdict, Kenya’s High Court ruled in favour of NACOFA. Despite this win and several others, the KFS has yet to effectively devolve forest management control to local communities, involve local communities in commercial timber ventures, or implement a system to ensure communities have access to the revenue accrued from the forest resources.
While the 2010 constitution was touted as revolutionary in matters of forest conservation and management, as it provided for devolved governance on farm forestry to counties, it also created layers of bureaucracy that make it difficult to resolve environmental governance issues. The 2010 constitution also provided for the equitable sharing of the benefits accruing from natural resource management. Subsequently, it informed the amendment of the Forest Act (2005) to the Forest Conservation and Management Act (2016), which clearly provides the requirement to ensure community participation under the direction of the KFS.
The new spectators
A few Community Forest Associations (CFAs) have thrived under this model, but despite these gains, and as researchers have observed, a siloed approach to forest conservation in Kenya positions local communities as mere spectators, despite their longstanding role in conserving natural resources. This neoliberal agenda is subtly reinforced by NGOs, whose financing priorities often shape governance practices without regard to local politics, environmental considerations, or social subjectivities. Power dynamics cascade from the national to the subnational and village levels, where elite capture is prevalent, manifested through “gatekeepers” and CFA executives, and legitimized by NGO funding.
This then produces environmental and conservation subjects and conservation spectators. It should be emphasized that local communities and their knowledge are and have always been pro-forest conservation. However, given the introduction of the neoliberal framing of conservation, they have been subtly “governed” to become conformists, as illustrated by this statement in Charles Okigbo’s book Development and Communication in Africa: “Though the state is the major actor in the civic public realm, it does not act alone. There are other actors – such as associations, political parties, and professional bodies, which operate along with the government in this political space.” Okigbo’s statement is manifested by actors who use the misnomer of “co-managers”, but it is a matter of semantics rather than a matter of genuine environmental governance change.
Fundamentally, like BMUs – Beach Management Units, their equivalent in the marine sector – CFAs are, unfortunately, only present to act as interphases (we dare say interlopers) between state and non-state actors, in terms of knowledge production and transmission – perhaps well intentioned but unintentionally producing a paradox that hurts the very communities they purport to be aiding.
If Kenya is to inclusively manage and conserve its forests, the country needs to rethink the philosophy and concept of management plans and agreements. We suggest a streamlined process that is accountable to a CFA’s executive that values the interests and the knowledge of the local communities, and can share their views transparently before signing these binding documents. Otherwise, co-management will continue producing spectators.
