By Juma Kwayera

United Nations agencies co-opted into the rehabilitation of the Mau Forest Complex waded into the sensitive conservation debate that has also put careers of some politicians on the line.

In a dramatic turn of events, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) are piling pressure on the Government to implement the findings of a taskforce on the conservation of the ecosystem that accounts for more than 57 per cent of the hydroelectric power.

The UN pressure has been triggered by reports that prominent people, including ministers, MPs and permanent secretaries who illegally acquired land in the Mau have launched a vicious fight-back by demanding that all settlers be compensated when the third phase of the evictions gets under way next month.

The UN, through the two agencies, is partnering with the Government in sourcing the Sh40 billion required for restoration of the largest local water tower.

Sources, who declined to be named for they are not authorised to talk to the media, told The Standard on Sunday the international community has taken issue with ministers and MPs who are "inciting" illegal settlers not to vacate the forest before compensation. The international agencies have taken issue with President Kibaki’s passivity on the matter.

UNDP is charged with the implementation of the National Accord, a product of the National Dialogue and Reconciliation talks, which hauled the country from the brink of disaster following the disputed 2007 presidential poll.

Unep, on the other hand, is the international agency that is overseeing the restoration of the Mau and similar threatened ecosystems.

Armed with the Report of the Government Taskforce on the Conservation of the Mau — whose findings and recommendations were endorsed by the Cabinet and Parliament in August — the officials questioned the move by Agriculture Minister William Ruto abd Chepalungu MP Isaac Ruto to demand compensation for all settlers.

"These are people who have turned poor peasants in the Mau into human shields," one of the UN officials says.

About the MPs’ lamentations, the official says: "If they were opposed to the evictions, they should have not approved the report at Cabinet level and when it was tabled in Parliament."

Already, conservationists say the lion has joined the elephant as one of the species that face extinction as a result of environmental degradation.

Contacted, Interim Co-ordination Secretariat on the Mau Forest conservation Chairman Hassan Noor Hassan declined to comment.

It was the same case with Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s office, whose spokesperson Dennis Onyango only said: "This (Mau evictions) is serious matter."

The attempt by Rift Valley MPs to make political capital of ongoing evictions is potentially a double-edged sword that puts the careers of several ministers and their surrogates on the line. The Mau forest rehabilitation exercise has taken a political dimension, with Rift Valley MPs projecting Raila as the enemy of the people evicted from Mau.

However, the UN says the matter is beyond the PM’s office as it affects other countries in the region that benefit from the water tower — Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, which are linked to Mau by via Lake Victoria.

Those who know the history of the Mau Forest alienation say the latest episode in the long-running supremacy fight between Raila and Ruto derives from fears the evictees are also piling pressure on local MPs to give them back their land.

Information from several reports on the land and ethnic clashes indicate people facing eviction from Mauche Settlement Scheme in south western Mau came from Chepalungu constituency.

The name of the settlement scheme is an acronym from Mau and Chepalungu (Mauche).

Interviewed, KWS and Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) officials who have been camping on the ground since the Government started implementing the eviction spoke of how large landowners were inciting the settlers to demand compensation.

A KNCHR official, S K Tororei, who visited Kuresoi and adjoining regions to assess the humanitarian crisis triggered by the evictions, says the perception of marginalisation accounts for the manifestation of antipathy that threatens to explode into ethnic animosity.