Kenya: UN Says Lake Turkana is Endangered

Kenya: UN Says Lake Turkana is Endangered

Featured image: Lake Turkana and the River Omo, a lifeline to many tribal peoples, are drying up due to mega dam. © Nicola Bailey/ Survival International, 2015

     by Survival International

UNESCO added Kenya’s Lake Turkana to its World Heritage Site Endangered List in June, a sign it believes the iconic lake’s survival is at risk.

Experts believe it is drying up largely because of the Gibe III dam, which lies upstream in Ethiopia and was completed in 2016.

For the eight different tribes of Ethiopia’s Omo valley region, the Gibe III dam and related sugar plantations project have already proved devastating. The dam has enabled local authorities to syphon off water from the Omo river to irrigate vast sugar plantations.

Forcibly evicted from their land, many of the country’s tribespeople have lost not only their homes but an entire way of life. The dam has ended the natural flood they depended on for flood retreat agriculture as well as depriving them of access to the river for fishing and for growing their crops.

Survival has received disturbing reports that tribal peoples are suffering from hunger and continue to suffer abuse and harassment if they speak out about the situation. Many communities are under pressure to relocate to government villages, a policy that most oppose.

The dam is also causing problems for the thousands of tribal peoples in northern Kenya who live around Lake Turkana and who fish its waters for their livelihood.

According to Ikal Ang’elei, director of the NGO Friends of Lake Turkana which has campaigned for years against the Gibe III dam: “The lives of local communities now hang in the balance given that their main sources of livelihood are facing extinction. This decision by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee should serve as a notice to Ethiopia to cancel any further dams planned on the Omo River.”

As early as 2010one such expert predicted that the dam would reduce the lake’s inflow by some 50% and would cause the lake’s depth to drop to a mere 10 meters. “The result could be another Aral Sea disaster in the making,” he warned.

The World Heritage Centre Committee now recognises that the dam has led to “overall rapid decline in water levels” and has meant that seasonal fluctuations have been “heavily disrupted.” As a result, the Committee agrees that “the disruption of the natural flooding regime is likely to have a negative impact on the fish population in Lake Turkana, which may in turn affect the balance of the ecosystem, the livelihoods of the local fishing communities and the floodplains, which support herbivore species.”

UNESCO’s decision follows several years of lobbying by indigenous and international organizations.

The Omo Valley tribes did not give their free, prior and informed consent to the Gibe III dam project, a fact that Survival International highlighted in its submission to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Despite the mounting evidence of the serious impacts of Gibe III on tribal peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Ethiopian government is currently building another dam on the Omo river called Koysha, or Gibe 4.

Salini Engineering reported to OECD over Ethiopia/Kenya dam disaster

Salini Engineering reported to OECD over Ethiopia/Kenya dam disaster

By Survival International

Survival International has reported Italian engineering giant Salini to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) over its construction of a controversial dam which is set to destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in Ethiopia and Kenya.

The dam has cut off the Omo river’s regular flooding, which 100,000 people rely on to water their crops and livestock and a further 100,000 depend on indirectly. According to experts, this could also spell the end for Lake Turkana – the world’s largest desert lake – and disaster for the 300,000 tribespeople living along its shores.

Salini did not seek the consent of local people before building the dam, but claimed that an “artificial flood release” would compensate them for their losses. However, this promised flood never came and thousands of people now face starvation.

Up to half a million people face starvation as a result of the dam Salini has constructed on the Omo river. © Magda Rakita/Survival International

Up to half a million people face starvation as a result of the dam Salini has constructed on the Omo river.
© Magda Rakita/Survival International

The region is one of the most important sites in early human evolution, and an area of exceptional biodiversity, with two World Heritage Sites and five national parks. The head of Kenya’s conservation agency said last week that the dam is unleashing “one of the worst environmental disasters you can imagine.”

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “Salini has ignored crucial evidence, made false promises and ridden roughshod over the rights of hundreds of thousands of people. Thousands are now facing starvation because Italy’s largest contractor, and one of its best known companies, didn’t think human rights were worth its time. The real consequences of the Ethiopian government’s devastating policies for its country’s development, which are shamefully supported by western aid agencies like the UK’s DFID and USAID, are plain for all to see. Stealing people’s land and causing massive environmental destruction is not progress, it is a death sentence for tribal peoples.”

Ethiopia Cancels Concession for Karaturi Land Grab

Ethiopia Cancels Concession for Karaturi Land Grab

Featured image:  Two Anuak women in the Gambella Province of Ethiopia. By Julio Garcia on March 18, 2007.

By Cultural Survival

On December 28, 2015 Ethiopia’s Agricultural Ministry revoked their contract with Karuturi Global Limited, an Indian company who in 2010 won a concession for 100,000 hectares of land to be developed for industrial agriculture for export in the Gambella region of southern Ethiopia, home to the Indigenous Anuak, Mezenger, Nuer, Opo, and Komo peoples. The Agricultural Ministry’s land investment agency cancelled the concession on the grounds that by 2012 Karuturi had developed only 1,200 hectares of land within the initial two year period of the contract.

Since 2013 the company began spiraling out of control, when it was found guilty of tax evasion in in a similar land grab venture in Kenya, and the following year had its operations was taken over by Stanbic Bank.

Karaturi’s Managing Director Sai Ramakrishna has challenged the Agricultural Ministry’s project termination in Ethiopia, telling Bloomberg Business, “I don’t recognize this cancellation,” and is seeking arbitration.  If international arbitration is granted, Karuturi will advocate for the continuation of the company’s commercial agriculture plan. Ethiopian officials have dismissed their claims.

Karuturi Global’s project failure resembles that of many foreign investors who have purchased land under the Ethiopian government’s push to lease Indigenous lands to foreign investors, in what many term “land grabbing.”  According to Bloomberg, none of these farms in Ethiopia have reported any success in exporting crops.

Ethiopia’s land leasing plans were described as a roadmap to development. Called “villagisation,” the plan involved removing the Indigenous Peoples who sustain themselves from their lands practising farming, hunting, gathering, and pastoralism, and grouping them into established villages, with the idea that the land would be used to produce large scale industrial agriculture to sustain the population’s food needs.  Jobs would be created, turning Indigenous Peoples into wage workers who could then buy foods.  But Karaturi’s plans were different–aiming to export grains for sale abroad rather than selling them locally, despite Ethiopia’s ban on the export of cereal crops.

The socio-economic transformation promised by the regional government was never realized. Rather, villagisation has meant the forced removal of Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands and the creation of an aid-dependant food source. Obang Metho,  Anuak human rights activist from Gambella, explained in a video with local media Ethiopian Satellite Television, “This was not empty land. People have been living on this land for generations. When I grew up we didn’t have an office job to earn wages, people depend on land. Our supermarket is going to the field. The field was our bank. When you take away our lands, you are taking away our livelihood, our futures.”

An aerial view of the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya where many Anuak people turned to for shelter after forced removal from Gambella. Photograph taken on November 1, 2011 by Oxfam International

An aerial view of the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya where many Anuak people turned to for shelter after forced removal from Gambella. Photograph taken on November 1, 2011 by Oxfam International

On a morning in late 2010 the Anuak peoples living in the province of Gambella were met by regional government officials and soldiers. Without their knowledge or consent the Ethiopian government had sold an estimated 42% of Anuak land to foreign investors. The Anuak people were forced to leave their only known livelihoods, including essential food sources, and move to government sponsored “villages” which soon turned into refugee camps.   In 2012, Human Rights Watch published its report, “’Waiting Here for Death’ Forced Displacement and “Villagization” in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region”  documenting the “forcible  moving tens of thousands of indigenous people in the western Gambella region from their homes to new villages under a  ‘villagization’ program.”

“In their old village there was a school under a mango tree. In the new village, donor money had paid for a new school building. The children, however, were too hungry to attend, roaming instead in the forest looking for food… but now the government can show the world there is a ‘school’” –Anuak refugee displaced to the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya (from The Guardian’s article, Ethiopia’s rights abuses ‘being ignored by US and UK aid agencies’.)

Since their displacement in 2010 the Anuak have become refugees – many having turned to the crowded refugee camps in South Sudan and Kenya. As a result of their forced displacement many of the Anuak, and other Indigenous Peoples of the southwest, have endured scores of human rights violations including documented cases of rape, torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and famine, while these conditions were ignored by donor agencies USAID and DfiD.

Now, Ethiopia, USAID and Dfid have a chance to right their wrongs, and return the lands to the Indigenous Peoples turned into development refugees. But the Agriculture Ministry has said that the rest of the land will return to a “land bank” for future re-investment.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly states in Article 28.1

Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.

For the survival of the Indigenous Peoples of Gambella, International aid agencies must take an active role to bring these displaced communities access to lands and a means of sustainable livelihoods.

Revival celebrating customary law and sacred natural sites in Bale, Ethiopia

Revival, a film from MELCA Ethiopia and The Gaia Foundation, follows a meeting of African Sacred Natural Site Custodians in the stunning highlands of Bale, Ethiopia. There they gathered to celebrate MELCA Ethiopia’s ten years working to revive Sacred Natural Sites and customary law in Ethiopia, to exchange knowledge, stories and experiences.

Featuring interviews with Sacred Natural Site Custodians and Earth Jurisprudence practitioners and vibrant footage from Ethiopia’s unique highland ecology, Revival takes us to the heart of efforts to regenerate biocultural diversity and restore a respectful relationship with Earth in Africa.

Our Roots, Our Responsibility

Our Roots, Our Responsibility

INDIGENOUS CUSTODIANS CALL FOR RECOGNITION AND PROTECTION OF SACRED NATURAL SITES

Indigenous custodians from Benin, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia have released a powerful new statement outlining the importance of sacred natural sites and governance systems.

Emerging out of a biocultural diversity revival movement that’s starting to build serious momentum across continental Africa, the statement forms the heart of a new report that builds the case for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to do its part.

The new report, authored by The Gaia Foundation, African Biodiversity Network and human rights lawyer Roger Chennels, draws attention to the way that sacred natural sites and their community custodians have been systematically undermined and violated since the colonial era. Despite the official decolonization of Africa, this persecution continues today, say the authors, who have extensively documented the renewed scramble for Africa’s land, mineral, metal and fossil fuel wealth and its impact on Indigenous territories.

Sabella Kaguna, a sacred site custodian from Tharaka, Kenya, with a map of her ancestral territory and indigenous seeds (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Sabella Kaguna, a sacred site custodian from Tharaka, Kenya, with a map of her ancestral territory and indigenous seeds (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Both the custodians and the report’s authors are now urging the African Commission to invoke the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (African Charter). and protect sacred sites, governance systems and custodians in a ‘decisive policy and legislative response’ to these threats.

SACRED NATURAL SITES

SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE AND LAW

According to the new report, sacred sites are “Places of ecological, cultural and spiritual importance, embedded in ancestral lands”. They also play an important role in community conflict resolution practices and other traditions central to the cultural life of Indigenous Peoples.In their statement custodians describe the centrality of sacred sites to their existence, writing that “Sacred natural sites are where we come from, the heart of life. They are our roots and our inspiration. We cannot live without our sacred natural sites, and we are responsible for protecting them.”

Sacred site custodians from Bale Ethiopia. (Photo :Tamara Korur)

Sacred site custodians from Bale Ethiopia. (Photo :Tamara Korur)

The custodians go on to outline in detail how sacred natural sites are the primary source of their laws and customary governance systems. Drawing together a list of common customary laws, the custodians demonstrate how these governance systems enable Indigenous Peoples to both protect their territories and maintain their ways of life and identities.

Quoting Beninese custodian Ousso Lio Appolinaire on the relationship between nature and culture, the report’s authors emphasize that a priori laws based upon and derived from the laws of the Earth underpin the great diversity of laws and customs practiced by Indigenous Peoples worldwide.

“In the beginning there was Nature; culture and indigenous knowledge come from Nature. Nature cannot be protected in a sustainable way without the culture of that place. The erosion of culture leads to the destruction of Nature. It is critical to conserve the culture and knowledge of our ancestors for good ecological governance in service of Nature”, says Appolinaire.

The custodians’ are calling for the African Commission to recognize and protect sacred natural sites on the basis that they are the foundations of the governance systems, cultures and values celebrated and enshrined in the African Charter.

The report discusses at length the commitment the African Charter makes to recognizing Africa’s legal plurality, including Indigenous People’s customary governance systems. Laying out a broad vision for an Africa free of colonialism, Articles 17, 18 and 61 of the Charter promote plurality and the traditional cultural values that, for custodian communities, are intimately tied to the existence and health of sacred natural sites.

In order to safeguard these rights, sacred natural sites must be protected, and the customary governance systems connected to them honored, argues the report.

LOSING LAND AND MEMORY

SACRED SITES UNDER THREAT

The custodian’s statement intimates a critical need to protect sacred natural sites in accordance with the African Charter due to the interconnected crises of disappearing knowledge and increasingly devastated ecosystems.

VhaVenda community members and their ecological calendar in Venda Limpopo. (Photo: Will Baxter)

VhaVenda community members and their ecological calendar in Venda Limpopo. (Photo: Will Baxter)

“We are deeply concerned about our Earth because she is suffering from increasing destruction despite all the discussions, international meetings, facts and figures and warning signs from Earth… the future of our children and the children of all the species of Earth are threatened. When this last generation of elders dies, we will lose the memory of how to live respectfully on the planet, if we do not learn from them now,” say the custodians.

As remedy, the custodians describe a litany of destructive and disrespectful practices that sacred natural sites ought to be legally protected from. These include unwanted tourism, research and documentation, the use of non-indigenous seeds, land grabbing and financial speculation.

Special attention is given to the problem of extractivism, with custodians declaring sacred natural sites to be ‘No Go Areas’ for mining and other forms of destructive ‘development’. They write that “Sacred natural sites are not for making money. Our children need a healthy planet with clean air, water and food from healthy soils. They cannot eat money as food or breathe money or drink money. If there is no water, there is no life.”

“In my country sacred sites are holy places, they are not a place for infrastructural development. Those sites are kept by the community”, says Sabella Kaguna, a custodian from Tharaka in Kenya and one of the statement’s authors.

In order to ensure custodian communities are empowered to protect sacred sites on their own terms, the custodians are seeking legal parity. They write that they have observed how the dominant legal system in their home nations is operationalized to legitimize the destruction of sacred natural sites in contravention of their own laws and customs.

This trend has been recognized by the African Commission’s own Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations. In a 2010 report the group described how “Indigenous communities in Kenya, like most others in Africa, often rely on their African customary law. However, Kenya’s legal framework subjugates African customary law to written laws. […] African customary law is placed at the bottom of the applicable laws”.

The report draws attention to examples of ‘multi-juridicial’ legal systems from around the world as examples of how indigenous legal traditions can be given greater parity. Describing the African Charter as ‘replete’ with references with legal pluralism and the need to respect ancestral legal systems, it makes the case for more wide-ranging and robust protection of these systems in African nations under the Charter.

A REVIVAL GATHERS PACE

Though the custodians’ statement calls for new actions from the African Commission and member states, at the grassroots level Indigenous custodian communities have been taking active steps to protect sacred natural sites for a number of years.

The report shares a number of case studies that showcase the success Indigenous communities have had in protecting sacred sites so far.

Meeting of sacred site custodians at Lake Langano, Ethiopia 2015 (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Meeting of sacred site custodians at Lake Langano, Ethiopia 2015 (Photo: The Gaia Foundation)

Benin is home to a network of sacred natural sites, known as Vodun zun, including over 2,940 sacred forests. In 2012, due in large part to the work of Indigenous-led organization GRABE-Benin, Benin set a new precedent by creating a ‘sacred forest law’ (Interministerial Order No.0121). The law formally protects sacred forests, recognizing their importance for biodiversity and ethno-cultural traditions.

Since that time GRABE-Benin has accompanied communities to apply for registration and legal recognition of their sacred forests as protected areas, as well as recognition of the communities’ rights to govern and protect them. By the end of 2013, a total of nine sacred forests had been formally protected.

Sheka Forest (Photo: Will Baxter)

Sheka Forest (Photo: Will Baxter)

In the Sheka region of Southern Ethiopia, a region famous for rare afromontane forests, Shekacho communities have made great strides to protect the area’s 200+ sacred natural sites from threats such as deforestation.

With assistance from MELCA-Ethiopia, a local NGO, the communities have begun to revitalize their traditional culture, and clans have united to seek protection for sacred sites. As a result of these efforts, Sheka Forest was recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2012. Since then, the regional government has issued a regulation for the protection of the Sheka forest Biosphere Reserve.

These successes are part of a wider process of Indigenous cultural revival under way across Africa. The report describes how communities such as those in Sheka and Benin are coming together to rebuild their cultural identities and customary governance systems. In doing so, they are challenging dominant legal systems that continue in the colonial vein of legitimizing eco-cultural destruction, rather than preventing it.

A new film from the report’s authors provides greater insight into this ongoing revival. In the film, Method Gundidza of the Mupo Foundation (South Africa) describes the critical importance of customary governance at a time of multiple eco-social crises:

“We are saying that law should derive from nature. And if law should derive from nature, customary governance systems are the law. This is where it (law) should come from. These are the (Indigenous) people whose day-to-day lives reflect how to live with nature and how to care for nature.”

The custodians and their supporters now hope their statement will impress this key insight upon the African Commission and inspire them to action. In the meantime, they will continue with their quiet revolution.