Environmental researcher who knows no borders

By Brenda Kageni

She is one of the few trailblazers for women and for the continent. Holding a doctorate in Public Policy, Dr Esther Mwangi has done numerous projects in environmental and land tenure issues and is now leading the development and implementation of a property rights and tenure strategy at CIFOR.

Dr Esther Mwangi says: "I learnt a lot on linking science to actions and achieving positive results on the ground." Photos: Courtesy

Turning moments

During her PhD, she undertook an interdisciplinary program that saw her study law, ecology and political science. This she considers as one of her watershed moments.

"If I had pursued further studies in Kenya it is unlikely that I’d have been able to make this shift from biophysical sciences to social sciences. Finding the connection between disciplines is the way of the future. Policy problems in environment and natural resources require a cross-fertilisation of viewpoints and methods. It opened up my view of problems and provided me with a different set of skills," says Mwangi.

She has also worked at the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC, where she coordinated and managed a global project on poverty reduction.

Says she: "I learnt a lot on linking science to actions and achieving positive results on the ground."

This was further reinforced at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Center for Environment where she got a fellowship to pursue work she had done during her PhD programme. The work was exploring why Maasais in Kajiado had gone towards individualisation of land instead of sticking to the communal land tenure common in pastoral communities in semi arid areas. She examined the implications of this privatisation on livelihoods and the environment and tried to establish the reasons why some of them were reconsolidating.

About the same time, she, along with Elinor Ostrom took on a USAID-supported research on forest decentralisation in East Africa and Latin America under the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Collaborative Research Support Programme. This research identified the impactsof devolving forest management to communities, something that close to 60 per cent of developing countries have done over the past decade. Countries under study were Uganda, Mexico, Bolivia and Kenya, a relative newcomer to devolution.

Challenges

As exciting as the career path has been, it hasn’t been without challenges. One of her biggest challenges, Esther says, is being female and being African in research on the world’s stage.

She explains: "You hardly see anyone who looks like you. There was no one to whom I could share experiences of my kind and learn from; no one sees through a similar lens as myself."

Even at IFPRI she was the only African female at that level during her term, but this has improved over the past few years. There are several other African women at CIFOR, some in research. However, most are based in Cameroon and Burkina Faso while Esther is in Indonesia.

"The movement upwards looks so much harder. It starts looking distant. It helps to see people like yourself in top positions," she says.

There has also been the challenge of living and working away from home for long periods. She has worked out of Kenya for the last 10 years.

She says: "Living away does take its toll on relationships, family and friends. I now want to reconnect better with my family and friends."

She initially got a professor who was interested in her work and who backed her.

"It happened so randomly; I didn’t design it," says the scientist, who considers herself lucky.

She adds: "From there your work speaks for itself. In the end, it’s your level of competence that people will acknowledge and support."

She also attributes her success to networks she cultivated, especially with her professors.

Esther is intent on participating in environmental management of natural resources and especially as concerns the empowerment of women, the rural poor and other marginalised people.

"I hope I can make a difference with this work. I will also continue the global level kind of work that I have been doing for the past few years. It is very satisfying working with like-minded people across the world, learning and sharing lessons and experiences," she says.