Karura forest under growing threat as 'developers' eye city's green belt

Reports indicate that some greedy individuals, operating under a company registered abroad, are trying to claim some ten acres of Karura forest as their personal property. They have actually taken the authorities preserving Karura (on behalf of Kenyans) to court accusing them of blocking “access to their property” by fencing Karura. They want the fence removed so that they can build high rise apartments in the forest for sale and make profit.

This might come across as stranger than fiction, but it is true. Let me tell you why. The last Master Plan for the development of Nairobi was done in 1974, four years before Jomo Kenyatta died. The next administration generally ignored the plan. The plan had envisaged a Nairobi with an attractive “environmental face”.

But Nairobi grew into one ugly concrete jungle with little regard for “green belts” inside and around the body of the city. As real estate ate up coffee farms when residential estates came up between the city and Kiambu, marauding real estate speculators began to eye Karura forest with a passion, literally sub-dividing it into parcels and cutting down trees in readiness for housing development. Had it not been for the late Prof Wangari Maathai who mobilised us to lead protests against the marauding real estate moguls, Karura would have been history. That was in the 90s.

Two decades later, the moguls are back. Like their cohorts in the 90s they are emboldened by the claim they are close to the powers that be, and that any public institution, including the courts, will dance to their tune.

They are also under the illusion that the absence of Wangari Maathai provides a fantastic opportunity to get away with murder: nobody is going to make the kind of noise Wangari made to stop them from achieving their objectives. In any case, they argue, ICRAF—an international organisation which should be concerned about the preservation of Karura -is itself a beneficiary of the excision of the forest. Why not them? Even if that is the case - and I am sure it is not— two wrongs never make a right.

Let us simply save the forest from any further excision: we have very little of it.

But why are the moguls in a hurry to “eat up Karura”?

First, they feel they don’t have time on their side: they must do it before 2017 just in case the political power equation changes. They could have tried to do it during the Kibaki regime but the political environment was rather hostile to any encroachment on Karura. In any case those who had built on road reserves saw exactly what happened to them.

Second, the new Nairobi Master Plan, finalised this week at the School of Monetary Studies, once it becomes law in Nairobi County, will foreclose any attempt to encroach on the limited greenery in the city.

The County Government needs to go further by ensuring that the Aga Khan fulfills his dream of restoring City Park to its former self. Drastic steps must be taken to demolish all those structures that were illegally built within the precincts of City Park. Once that is done many environmentalists will be more than willing to restore City Park as a lively greenery for use by the city ‘s residents during the day and at night.

Moving towards the eastern part of Nairobi we have a big problem. The relationship between the built environment and the green environment is simply disappointing. Over the years the greed to put up houses at the expense of preserving the environment has led to other more serious issues related to waste management, lack of recreational facilities and frequent outbreak of water and air borne diseases.

In the 1960s when I used to visit my uncle in Kaloleni Estate, house number XII here in Nairobi, we used to have lawns lined with trees and properly trimmed green grass to play on daily. The milk man used to deliver a bottle every morning and leave it at our doorstep.

He would come for it in the same place the next day, replacing it with a new supply of milk. Today neither the green lawns nor the KCC milk delivery are there: life has indeed changed for the worst.

But Nairobi can easily reclaim its past glory and even do better. Master Plans only provide the road map to the future: for this map to be useful we need visionary implementers of these plans to ensure that Nairobi of tomorrow will be a city in which human beings live in harmony with nature and environmental degradation is not aided and abetted by the greed of men and women of our times.

A robust public housing scheme that preserves the environment while providing adequate and affordable accommodation for ordinary Kenyans is vital.

And it is not rocket science to do this nor would it cost a bomb. Kenyans have perfected the culture of building capital through SACCOS and other cooperative ventures: both the national and county governments only need to partner with such people’s initiatives to implement wholesome housing policies that will be characteristic of the Nairobi We Want.

What is interesting is that these ideas are already in the possession of any executive occupant of City Hall.

In the early 90s when Magic Mwangi was Mayor of Nairobi, I worked very closely with the Heinrich Neumann Foundation, then led by Dr Dorothy Brentano, to bring together Nairobi citizens to discuss “The Nairobi We Want.”

There is no doubt in my mind that the ideas expressed then were as valid then as they would be today, more than two decades later. The Nairobi we wanted then included a Nairobi where grabbers of Karura forest would have been sent to the gallows if the people had had their way then.

With the current Constitution, land use is the responsibility of the County and government land should no longer be wantonly allocated by the green signature of one person called the President. I hope that the Judiciary is not going to be used to subvert the gains of Kenyans as they are enshrined in the Constitution.

I hope too that Karura forest, City Park, Uhuru Park, the Arboretum and many other “green belts” in the City of Nairobi will not only be preserved but many more will be added as we carefully balance the built environment with the natural environmental coverage of our land surface.