Where the forest keeps the law: The Ogiek write a Life Plan for their land

Members of the Ogiek Community of Chepkitale welcome visitors from the Colombia Misak Indigenous community during their visit to Mt Elgon. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

The morning dew still clung to the grass as Moses Masai left his homestead in Labot village, high in the moorlands of Mt Elgon, to gather ceremonial twigs for visiting guests. With every step, his boots left imprints in the wet grass, marking a quiet trail across the open landscape. Along the forest edge, old trees draped in moss looked almost enchanted, while mist rose slowly from the earth like soft smoke.

To him, these scenes are ordinary. The moorlands, forests, people, and wildlife.

Whenever guests visit Chepkitale, an 80,000-acre ancestral territory of the Ogiek indigenous community, Moses is often tasked with gathering special twigs from sacred trees to welcome them. This morning was no different. His people, the Ogiek of Chepkitale, were preparing to welcome visitors to discuss a community Life Plan, a document expected to guide the future of their ancestral land and protect the environment for generations to come.

“Our home is the forest, and our culture revolves around the trees. An event cannot take place in our culture if we cannot find any of these twigs. They signify a warm welcome, friendship and prosperity,” Moses explained.

He seemed to have mastered the landscape well. He knows the exact grove where he would select the two bamboo stalks, the particular spot where a sacred climbing plant grew, and the patches of forest that the community has left untouched to rest and regenerate.

“There are specific places where I get the twigs from within the forest, and there are places that I can not because they have been set aside to regenerate,” Moses said.

In Chepkitale, where the Ogiek have lived for generations, customary by-laws and indigenous knowledge are the unwritten rules of the land. For them, careful resource use is a matter of survival. Every community member is taught from a very early age to read the forest. They know how to identify a good bamboo grove, how much to take and how much to leave behind. They also know the out-of-bounds areas, which are strictly preserved for collecting medicinal herbs, grazing, and residential use. Even children know it is taboo for them to carry around machetes or axes.

Although the rules are mostly unwritten, the Ogiek of Chepkitale have, over the years, developed their own form of 'spatial planning' which sets aside areas for various activities.

“Conservation has never been new to us. It is something that's been passed down through the generations. The very way of life we have inherited from our forefathers was a traditional hunter-gatherer way of life, designed to conserve the land,” says Cosmas Murunga, Chair of the Ogiek Governing Council.

But how have the Ogieks of Chepkitale managed their territories within one of Kenya’s largest water towers?

Under their governance system, the community has two administrative units: the Supreme Council and the Governing Council. The Ogiek Supreme Council manages the members' overall affairs, while the community's Governing Council ensures the security of the environment, land, language, livelihoods, and education. While the Governing Council's work centres on the environment and their lands, it also ensures sustainable, livelihood-friendly practices.

A cave within the Chepkitale landscape of Mt Elgon. INSET: Janet Chemutai, a traditional herbalist and chairperson of the Ogiek women of Chepkitale. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

“That is why we have the community by-laws, set by the elders, to conserve the environment and manage land use. Because cultivation is prohibited in these territories, our livelihood activities largely involve pastoralism and beekeeping. These activities are friendly to our environment,” Murunga says.

The governing council imposes penalties for violations of community laws. Penalties may range from fines, such as surrendering part of your livestock to the community, to expulsion from the community for repeated breaches of the laws.

Key laws that attract penalties include cutting down a life tree and using tools such as axes and machetes, which carry varying penalties.

“If someone cuts a sacred tree, for example, and has a history of violations, they might end up being expelled from these territories,” Murunga explained.

Under the community by-laws, the open moorlands serve as grazing areas during the wet season, and some forest zones are conserved for the dry season. While the community keeps cattle, sheep, and goats, the laws limit the number of goats to 20 because they are considered somewhat destructive to certain plants.

Their nomadic settlement allows families to move after a few years, letting the area regenerate. This discourages permanent buildings within the moorlands. Before moving, people are shown a specific place to build, away from grazing zones.

The law also prohibits poaching of wild game. Trapping wild animals and birds also violates the regulations. As part of traditional wildlife protection, each of the 32 clans in the territory has a totem, an animal that serves as a sacred symbol for the clan.

“Totemism also plays a key role in protecting this wildlife. Others have wild dogs, specific birds, elephants and many other wildlife as their totems,” Murunga explained.

 For herbalists like Janet Chemutai, who is also the chair of Ogiek women from Chepkitale, the law applies. The bylaws stipulate that community herbalists must be issued permits to undertake their work, which also promotes sustainability.

“There are specific ways in which we harvest tree bark to ensure that the tree does not dry out. Once you remove part of the bark, you take wet soil and rub it on the area.” Chemutai explained.

“The same applies to harvesting roots. Only a few are harvested, and an herbalist has to put back the tree and cover the remaining roots.”  She added.

While most community members use firewood, the regulations permit collection only from naturally fallen trees. Cutting down a live tree for firewood is an offence, as is the commercialisation of firewood. The areas designated for firewood collection are protected from fire.

Case resolution proceeds through stages, beginning at Kokwet (village) level, where the village resolves the case. If the case cannot be resolved at this level, it moves to the Emet; if it cannot be resolved there, it goes to Bororiet, where clan elders decide the case. If the case is beyond their authority, they refer it to the governing council, the highest level, where the final judgement is delivered. Offences handled at this stage may attract tougher penalties, such as expulsion from the community.

“The highest level of judgement is the Ogiek Governing Council, which may decide to expel an offender depending on repeat violations of community laws. This is when an offender is becoming a danger to the community and can no longer respect the set rules,” Murunga explained.

 Offenders are often fined livestock, depending on the seriousness of the offence. They are also warned, and his clan is made aware of the incident.

According to Murunga, the Ogiek of Chepkitale developed stringent binding laws to protect their territory after realising that education, religion, and wealth might alter their culture and traditional way of living.

“The community is wary of these three things and how easily they can affect our way of life. Religion, for example, might easily erode people’s beliefs, which is why we are cautious about places of worship. Wealth can also lead people to make decisions that can destroy our ecosystem, as can foreign education,” Murunga noted.

“As much as we encourage our children and support them to the highest levels of education, the law binds them that when they return home, they uphold the values and sustainable ways of living within Chepkitale,” he said.

Peter Kitelo, director of the Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project (CIDPD), explained that the community has its own unique conservation practices that aim to keep the environment as natural as it was.

“Our approach to conservation is different from the approach of planting trees all over. We leave forests alone to regenerate without disturbance. This way, the natural species grow in places where they are supposed to,” Kitelo said.

Enters the science...

But while indigenous knowledge and traditional bylaws have kept Chepkitale a model of community-conserved territories, the community is now incorporating science to monitor biodiversity health within its territories. Through a partnership with researchers from the University of Oxford, the community has trained biodiversity monitors in scientific monitoring. This initiative aims to document and preserve their cultural heritage while improving land management.

Although the community has long practised species monitoring, mobile applications help them document wildlife and key biodiversity hotspots within their territories.

“Science borrows heavily from indigenous knowledge; for example, traditionally, monitoring involved reporting what someone has seen in the field during the day. Although such information was very useful in telling the occurrence, what lacked was documentation, something that mobile applications are now helping with,” explains Elijah Kitelo, who is in charge of collating the data from the field.

 The community now monitors its ecosystem using line transects, quadrants, and camera traps. Men monitor biodiversity by following line transects from the top of Mt Elgon to the edge of their territory. During this kind of monitoring, which often takes up to four days of walking and recording sounds, footprints, and animal sightings along the transect, biodiversity monitors use coordinates as a guide. The coordinates help map the exact areas where the recordings were made, making it easier to identify biodiversity trends.

While men conduct line transects, women also play a critical role in monitoring bamboo thickets using the quadrant method. Under this method, biodiversity monitors assess the health of groups of bamboo thickets across the landscape. Because women mostly use bamboo to make baskets and collect bamboo shoots that the community uses as traditional vegetables, they are seen as the rightful monitors within the bamboo forests.

For biodiversity monitors like Leah Chepkemoi, regular visits to the bamboo forest help keep the ecosystem healthy, and they find the work fulfilling and engaging.

“We come here to check if there is any destruction or if the bamboos are healthy. When monitoring the bamboo, we take the coordinates of a square batch and record what we see by answering the questions in a mobile application. We record the sounds of animals and birds that we can hear. We also record what we can see, such as elephant dung,” Chepkemoi said.

The team also records the number of young shoots, how many are harvested, and how many remain standing. This allows them to decide whether to leave the batch to regenerate or harvest part of it for vegetables or baskets.

The biodiversity monitors also record other tree species and even insects within bamboo stands. Often, the women say that several herbs the community uses for traditional medicine are found in the undergrowth of bamboo forests.

“The health of bamboos is critical for us women since we make several and we have to make sure they are healthy. Through monitoring, we have been able to document the diseases that often attack bamboos and the periods when these diseases strike,” Chepkemoi added.

Elijah says that the community also uses camera traps to monitor elusive wildlife, especially in tougher forest terrain.

“These camera traps are mounted within different parts of the forests to monitor wildlife that can rarely be spotted during regular monitoring. Through this, we have been able to document wildlife like serval cats, wild dogs, giant forest hogs, among others,” Elijah said.

The team conducts comprehensive monitoring across the landscape every three months, after which both field biodiversity monitors and elders review the data. The elders help identify wildlife using the local names they have recorded. The data also helps teams identify and map healthy and degraded areas.

 “Through these data, we have been able to develop maps for sustainable ecosystem use. We have also been able to document the wildlife migratory routes and critical areas like swamps, springs, salt licks, rivers and caves,” Elijah added.

Beyond map development, biodiversity monitoring also supports indigenous knowledge transfer, where young people learn about different species, where they occur, their names in the indigenous language, and the roles they play.

“For young biodiversity monitors, we learn a lot about different plants and animals, specifically their uses. We learn about special herbs, including poisonous ones, those used on different occasions, and those used as medicine. We also learn about animals within these territories and their conservation statuses,” David Kwalya said.

Peter Kitelo explained that monitoring aims not only to inspire science but also to help the community make decisions that better conserve their lands.

“For the longest time, we have not been open to researchers as a community, but such a collaboration on biodiversity monitoring has given the community the power to monitor its own biodiversity and use the information to make its own decisions,” he added.

From a few years of monitoring, Kitelo said that there have been successes in conserving some areas, as well as in documenting emerging issues that call for more research.

“Through monitoring, for example, we have realised that the water levels in the caves have been going down almost every year. We might not yet know what that means in detail, but it is something we keep documenting,” he said.

Writing a Life Plan

Although the Ogiek of Chepkitale have sustainably managed their ancestral lands for generations, they have repeatedly faced eviction due to state policies that prioritise protected-area conservation over indigenous rights

However, on September 26, 2022, the Ogiek of Chepkitale reached a historic legal milestone when the High Court of Kenya in Bungoma ruled that gazetting their ancestral land as a national game reserve was unconstitutional and unlawful.

The landmark decision followed a 14-year legal battle, after the community first filed the case in 2008 to challenge the 2000 gazettement of their land.

Following the case, the community has begun formally registering more than 80,000 acres of its ancestral land. It is also revising its by-laws to align with the Community Lands Act and the Constitution.

“Basically, we are updating them so that our by-laws will have the force of law, apart from having only the effect of a community,” Godfrey Naipei, a member of the Chepkitale Land Management Committee, said.

Alongside land registration, the community is also launching a one-of-a-kind community vision known as Life Plan.

To help shape their vision, the Ogiek invited leaders of the indigenous Misak people from the Colombian Andes, who famously pioneered the Plan de Vida model between 1987 and 1994 to assert territorial self-determination.

In their Life Plan, which is currently being documented, the Ogiek of Chepkitale aim to preserve traditional knowledge, including governance, spiritual traditions, totemic systems, sacred sites, biodiversity practices, and livelihood strategies.

“This is about looking into the community's future and how the community will be in future. This has been driven by the challenges and successes which we have documented as a community. This plan will examine how we can sustain the gains we have achieved and respond to challenges.” Peter Kitelo, executive director of the Chepkitale Indigenous Peoples Development Project, said.

The Misak Life Plan is recognised as a pioneering model for indigenous self-determination. The Misak people of Colombia first formulated it between 1987 and 1994; it focuses on protecting their environment, water resources, and ancestral knowledge.

"Having a plan shows that you have a vision," Kitelo reflects. "If a community doesn't have a vision, it cannot survive. Our Life Plan ensures that as we face climate change, legal battles, and external research pressures, we do so with a clear, united direction."

The community says that the Life Plan is expected to also solve the rampant exploitation of traditional indigenous knowledge without consent, a practice they label as biopiracy.

"Traditional knowledge is a vital community resource, yet we have seen repeated examples of it being taken away without our consent or Free, Prior, and Informed Consent," Kitelo reveals.

To end this exploitation, Kitelo emphasised that the Ogiek Life Plan will establish enforceable Biocultural Protocols that set strict, non-negotiable terms for any external entity entering Chepkitale.

“Researchers must have their own internal ethical guidelines when working with indigenous people. Through our Life Plan and Biocultural Protocols, we are creating enforceable mechanisms that hold both government institutions and universities fully accountable.”

According to Teresiah Chemosop, an Ogiek women leader, the plan preserves traditional bylaws and serves as an assessment tool designed to help the Ogiek adapt to accelerating climate impacts.

Chemosop said that years of forced evictions and worsening climate variability have sometimes pushed community members outside their traditional conservation norms just to survive.

"We have to unlearn some of the things that don't conform with our identity as indigenous people," she said.

"It allows us to ask: What have we done well? How can we make it better? And how can our successes inspire other indigenous communities across the region?"

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