GREAT RIFT VALLEY, Kenya, Sep 6 (IPS) – Between 2001 and 2022, deforestation of the Mau Forest resulted in the loss of about 533 square kilometres of tree cover. Now a group of women, under the auspices of the Paran Women Group, are preparing to plant 100,000 saplings this rainy season in a bid to restore the forest. The Great Rift Valley is part of an intracontinental mountain system that runs north to south across Kenya. A breathtaking, diverse mix of natural beauty, it includes dramatic escarpments, highland mountains, cliffs and gorges, lakes and savannahs. It is also home to one of Africa’s largest wildlife sanctuaries, the Masaai Mara National Reserve.
It concerns the 400,000 hectares of the Mau Forest Complex that give life to this wondrous natural phenomenon. Located about 170 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, this is the largest indigenous montane forest in East Africa. It is also the largest of the country’s five watersheds and a catchment area for 12 rivers that flow into five major lakes.
More than 10 million people depend on the rivers. Unfortunately, their magnificent portfolio of rare plant and animal species is a magnet for illegal activity. Forestry groups say that as much as 25 percent of the forest was lost between 1984 and 2020, with Mau Forest losing a total of 19 percent of its tree cover—about 533 square kilometers—between 2001 and 2022.
“Paran Women Group is committed to the restoration of Mau Forest. To stop the pace and severity of destruction and degradation, we approached the government through the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and were given access to 200 hectares of the Maasai Mau Forest block, one of the 22 blocks that make up the entire Mau Forest Complex. There are 280 water catchments within the complex,” said Naiyan Kiplagat, the Executive Director of the Paran Women Group told IPS.
“We started our restoration work in January this year and have already covered 100 acres. At present, we have prepared 70,000 seedlings and plan to collect another 30,000 from women’s groups to reach our target of 100,000 tree seedlings, which will be planted once the rainy season starts and cover the remaining 100 acres.”
In Maa, a language spoken by the Maasai community, Paran means ‘coming together to help each other’. Paran Women Group is an organisation made up of women from the Maasai and Ogiek communities, who are indigenous ethnic minority groups.
The organization consists of 64 women’s groups and 3,718 members. United against double marginalization and patriarchy, the group started small in 2005 and continues to grow and expand its grassroots and protection activities.
They carry the wisdom of their ancestors and rely on indigenous knowledge and innovation in their conservation, reforestation, reforestation and all other land restoration efforts, while promoting gender equality. The Paran Women Resource Centre is located in Eor Ewuaso, a remote rural village in the Ololunga locality of Narok Sout sub-county, Narok County, in the Rift Valley.
The women have title deeds to the vast tract of land, a remarkable achievement in a minority community where women have little autonomy and the land is owned and managed by men. They have seven satellite resource centres within the vast provinces that are aimed at giving women access to productive resources.
These centres are a hub of knowledge and activities to promote conservation and livelihoods such as sustainable farming, beekeeping, beadwork and briquettes for energy-saving cooking to relieve pressure on the besieged Mau Forest. More than 617 households are already using efficient, energy-saving stoves.
“We are conservationists with a passion for gender equality. Gender-based violence is common in indigenous communities, such as the illegal practice of female genital mutilation and forced marriages. The most recent incident was of a nine-year-old girl. We are marginalized as a community in general and worse, our culture has few rights for women and girls. We help children stay in school by paying school fees through our income-generating activities,” she says.
Patrick Lemanyan, a resident of Ololunga, says that women in Paran “raise and sell chicken and food items such as pumpkin, vegetables and sorghum. They also sell beadwork. Maasai beadwork is unique, beautiful and very marketable. In Nairobi, there is even the popular Maasai market for such beadwork and other Maasai items such as sandals. The women here do not face any resistance from the community. We have suffered from failed rains for years and we know that saving the forest is also about saving ourselves as a community.”
Naiyan says indigenous communities depend on natural resources such as forests, rivers and their biodiversity for their survival. The ongoing climate and biodiversity crises are hitting them hardest as a community. Women lack property and are therefore worse off.
“The Maasai are pastoralists. During long dry seasons, a man will take all the livestock and move from place to place for three years, leaving his wives and children behind. The family is left with nothing, because women own nothing,” she says.
Naiyan, an Ogiek married to a Maasai, says the Ogiek have fared no better. As hunters and gatherers in an ecosystem devastated by human activity and climate change, they too are in a life-and-death situation and are learning to eke out a living outside their indigenous lifestyle by raising poultry for sale and farming. The men do not keep or interfere with poultry, as it is considered too lowly for them. They keep large livestock, such as cows and goats.
“The role of indigenous groups, and especially women, in environmental protection cannot be overstated, especially as women are able to combine conservation efforts with income-generating activities. They educate and support each other, and their children grow up to go to school, breaking the debilitating cycle of poverty associated with minority groups due to historical injustices and inequalities,” says Vesca Ikenya, a lecturer in Gender and Natural Resources.
Emphasizing that “Indigenous people and local communities bring on board indigenous knowledge and leadership that only they possess as custodians of their own lands and waters and who have had intimate interactions with their ecosystems since time immemorial. Each generation preserves and passes this knowledge on to the next. When Indigenous and local communities take the lead in conservation efforts, they never get it wrong. They understand what species grew where and when.”
The Paran Women Group’s tree nursery is home to 27 native species, including croton macrostacyus, syzygium cuminii, prunus African And Olea AfricansOf the 150,000 tree seedlings planted so far this year, 112,500 have survived and are still growing well.
According to 2021 International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs And International Labour Organisation joint reportIndigenous peoples were responsible for protecting an estimated 22 percent of the Earth’s land surface and 80 percent of its biodiversity.
The Paran Women Group has not gone unnoticed and has won a series of international awards. In 2018, they received a Rural Survival Award from the World Women Foundation Summit; in 2020, they received the International Leadership Award from the International Indigenous Women’s Forum; last year, during COP28 in the UAE, they received the Gender Justice Climate Solutions and are preparing to receive another international award in October 2024.
This feature is published with the support of the Open Society Foundations.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
