Agriculture top threat to wildlife, says report

US First Lady Melania Trump and the Executive Director of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Angela Sheldrick, admire a young elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s Elephant Nursery at the Nairobi National Park.

Counties at the Coast and in western Kenya are setting themselves up to be mining hubs while those in Eastern have embarked on large-scale agricultural projects

The world has lost up to 60 per cent of its wildlife in the last four and a half decades as a result of the impact of 10 key industries that are also key in the development of Third World countries.

The 2018 World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature’s Living Planet Report says the biggest threat to the world’s biodiversity lies in the effects of mining, large-scale agriculture, livestock, unsustainable logging, charcoal and firewood, hydroelectric power projects, small-scale agriculture as well as infrastructure projects.

Like many parts of the developing world, Kenya is banking on these key industries to grow its economy and transition into a middle income country.

Mining hubs

Several counties at the Coast and in western Kenya are setting themselves up to be mining hubs.

Those in Eastern have embarked on large-scale agricultural projects such as the Galana-Kulalu irrigation scheme. Infrastructure projects are the buzzwords in Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency, with mega projects such as the Standard Gauge Railway and the entire LAPSSET corridor project occupying majority of pages in the government’s development blueprint.

The SGR, for example, has a whole section passing through the Nairobi National Park snaking its way to Naivasha.

But how does a country such as Kenya, famed for its biodiversity, strike a balance between development and preservation?

“We have to decide which way to go and how to pace our development needs,” environmentalist Isaac Kalua says.

Also of key concern in the WWF report is the drastic decrease of the world’s forest cover.

Reforestation programme

“In one study carried out in 46 countries in the tropics and sub-tropics, large-scale commercial agriculture and local subsistence agriculture were responsible for about 40 per cent and 33 per cent of forest conversion, between the years 2000 and 2010.

“The remaining 27 per cent of deforestation was due to urban growth, infrastructure expansion and mining,” the report says.

In a bid to mitigate the effects of deforestation, President Kenyatta announced a reforestation programme that sought to target schools. Although laudable, some say the root causes of the pressure on protected forests need to be addressed.

“It is not just enough to plant trees. We also have to deal with the politics involved with the grabbing of forest land,” says Narok Senator Ledama ole Kina.

“Currently, the rate at which forests are being cleared for human settlement and agriculture is faster than the speed with which we plant trees.”

Kina says if this goes on, key forest ecosystems will be lost in no time.

Yet it is not just forest area that is being reduced by human activities; forest quality is also being affected.

“The world’s forests are at risk from the negative effects of human activities, altered micro-climate and invasive species,” the report says.

Ambitious economies

As populations increase and pressure on forest cover goes up, other aspects of the environment too continue to suffer as countries strive to reach their development milestones.

The marine ecosystem, the report says, has not been spared.

In a bid to maintain its dominance as one of East Africa’s biggest and most ambitious economies, Kenya is betting big on dirty energy by building a controversial Chinese-funded coal plant at a World Heritage site.

The ambitious 1,050-megawatt plant is set to meet an anticipated energy demand from a growing economy as well as a growing population.

But as building approvals trickle in to the historic seaside town of Lamu, a pristine ecological zone, doubts continue to be cast over the long-term impact of the project.

What, however does the future hold in a world where science is constantly providing the numbers, pointing to an imbalanced world in which man continues to fuel the fires that threaten to forever alter normalcy as we know it?