Exploring 'green travel' on Earth Day, from a Kenyan's perspective

Seattle Post Globe
By John Mbaria
4-22-10

This is the first of a three-part series on how social and economic interactions between people in the developing world and those in the developed world creates serious implications for fragile ecosystems. We invite you to join Kenyan journalist John Mbaria on Earth Day as he takes you on a truly "green" tour that might help you appreciate these issues. He has experienced first hand the struggles of many in Africa who face the consequences of an increasingly warming earth, the destruction of many life-sustaining ecosystems and the failure of political systems and institutions to plan for the consequences of these forces. Mbaria is a trained land use planner and a journalist who previously worked as the environment correspondent with The EastAfrican, a regional weekly read in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. He recently moved to Seattle from Kenya and is a contributing writer to InvestigateWest.

Part one of a series
Long before the world put mass tourism under the spotlight, people had become accustomed to images of truckloads of excited tourists surrounding a pack of sleepy lions or a lone cheetah resting under a tree somewhere in Africa.

The global tourist industry aggressively attempts to cater to millions of people who traverse the globe in search of such rare, exotic experiences. In 2009, the United Nations World Tourism Organization estimated that about 880 million people engaged in international travel. To make such travel possible, less stressful and luxurious involves the production of huge quantities of a whole range of products - food, bottled water, beds, blankets, toiletries and so on. But the daily crowding around historic sites, natural sanctuaries and other exotic attractions by fascinated, wide-eyed and noisy tourists tended to destroy their uniqueness and attractiveness. The full implication of mass visits to areas with fragile ecosystems is not hard to imagine.

But there is another side to it. In many African countries, local people, on whose lands national parks, reserves or wildlife sanctuaries were established, have little to do with it. Most were set up during the heyday of colonialism and with disregard to local people's land rights. They were (and still are) managed by large, somewhat rigid national bureaucracies which have largely been insensitive to needs and aspirations of the people. And beasts being beasts, wild animals often stray from the unfenced parks killing some of the local people, maiming others or destroying livelihoods. In Kenya for instance, when your relative is mauled by a lion or killed by a rogue elephant, you are bound to wait for ages before anyone accepts liability and feels obliged to compensate you. Even then, the set "reimbursement" is a paltry $450, despite recent efforts to raise the cap.

Many of the parks are unfenced and so wild animals routinely stray into private people's ranches and farms, where they come into real conflict with the owners. In addition to killing residents, they also destroy property. In the photo on the left, elephants have damaged a resident's banana plantation in the Imenti North area of Eastern Kenya. (Photo by John Mbaria)

At the same time, the biggest proportion of the tourist infrastructure in many African countries is in the hands of subsidiaries of big corporations in the West who get their food and other goods from well established outlets, not the local markets. If they are lucky, a few local people get menial jobs as luggage handlers, sweepers, ground maintainers or dancers.

A report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development in 2007 indicated that as much as 85 percent of the cash generated from the tourism sector in some African countries is spent outside of the countries themselves. Such statistics have greatly boosted claims made by critics that mass tourism is quite unattractive, exploitative, and not unsustainable. Probably the most memorable take by any critic was made by Jeremy Seabrook, a freelance journalist based in the UK:

“Tourism consumes the places on which it alights, predatory, omnivorous and yet protected from any contact with disagreeable realities like poverty, squalor, crime and violence. It sanitizes and cleanses, offering people an experience prepackaged in the great factory of illusion, sensations crafted by an industry which masks real relationships in the world. “

It is therefore not by chance that the world has embraced new forms of travel, and particularly ecotourism. Those promoting ecotourism have crafted high-sounding rhetoric to galvanize global support for it. It is often hailed as “respectful travel,” one that promotes the goals of poverty reduction, fair trade, peace and mutual understanding and respect between societies.

Given that, it’s understandable why many would support ecotourism. But while working as a journalist in Kenya, I came to believe that the reality of ecotourism is at total odds with the picture painted by the promoters in tourist brochures.

With 55 national parks and wildlife reserves, Kenya still hosts huge slices of the wilderness where one can go out there, silently gaze at it all and - if lucky - get the rare opportunity to ponder how insignificant humans are in the natural order of things. Some of the places have virgin, pristine wilderness, undisturbed by human frailties and almost yearning to be discovered.

Before the advent of colonialism in the late 1890s, this wilderness was the property of local ethnic groups that had safeguarded it for hundreds of years. The traditional communities used just as much land as was necessary and preserved many of the natural systems through a combination of unwritten rules, spiritual codes, taboos and myths. But with colonialism came a social and legal order that was introduced by outsiders who determined that the local people's historic attachment to the land was too nomadic to be accorded any legal protection.

To date, Kenya's natural diversity has few parallels anywhere in the world. The biggest percentage of this wealth is managed by a public corporation, the Kenya Wildlife Service, whose paramilitary staff wields the big stick to protect elephants, beetles and everything in between. To facilitate its operation, the Service collects every cent generated from park-gate collections and leasing land to hoteliers and lodge owners, and transfers the funds from the parks in the countryside to its head office in Nairobi.

The need for “responsible travel” became more imminent for Kenya as well as other countries within the tropics - because of a need to preserve a natural buffer. Like other sub-Saharan countries, Kenya is constantly ravaged by frequent and biting droughts as well as destructive floods occasioned by rising global temperatures and the inability of the now-degraded land to shield local people.

More importantly, ecotourism was seen as the long-awaited “savior” because most of the country's wildlife dominated areas have fragile ecosystems that threatened to degenerate into dust bowls if nothing was done to stop thousands of vans crisscrossing parks in search of the few remaining carnivores. For some of the animals - like the cheetah -- day-long visitations by hordes of adoring, fascinated, camera-clicking gazers prevented them from mating, hunting or performing other biological functions.

It was clear that something needed to change. But what?

Read the second part of this series on Friday

Article at: http://invw.org/node/1011

How green is 'ecotourism?' Taking apart the myth

Investigate West
By John Mbaria
4-23-10

This is the second of a three-part series on how social and economic interactions between people in the developing world and those in the developed world creates serious implications for fragile ecosystems. We invite you to join Kenyan journalist John Mbaria, who has experienced first hand the struggles of many in Africa who face the consequences of an increasingly warming earth, the destruction of many life-sustaining ecosystems and the failure of political systems and institutions to plan for the consequences of these forces. Mbaria is a trained land use planner and a journalist who previously worked as the environment correspondent with The EastAfrican, a regional weekly read in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. He recently moved to Seattle from Kenya and is a contributing writer to InvestigateWest.

Part two of a three-part series
In my many travels across Kenya, I found enough justification to explode the myth that ecotourism - as practiced there and elsewhere in Africa- is responsible, respectful travel, that is also enabling the poor to bake real bread as well as helping to keep communities happy who communally own the land,.

Before I went out to cover the story, my attention had been drawn to several agreements made between investors and such communities over the last couple of decades. I had made powerful bonds with people like Sammy ole Mpeti, a persistent and courageous Maasai man who had engaged in an incessant struggle for the rights of his people to own and benefit from the tourism business generated from the Siana Group Ranch (located outside the world-famous Maasai Mara National Reserve). Sammy's efforts recently yielded fruits when - together with other local people, he managed to register a community-owned tourism business and to put up a tourist camp. I had also befriended Richard Koiyet, Andrew ole Nangurai, Daniel ole Leturesh and Meitamei Oldapash - all who had carried the Maasai people's aspirations under the banner of Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition (which is also registered in the U.S.). After the many visits we made together to communities living in and outside Maasai Mara, I became acutely aware of the lopsided nature of the tourism business that had now assumed the ecotourism banner. This was between early 2001 and mid-2002.

Much of the ecotourism occurring in Kenya is taking place on the lands of the Maasai people in southern Kenya. This is primarily because the Maasai have maintained their traditional way of life, which preserved the land and the animals that live on it. The land is rich in wildlife because the Maasai did not kill or eat wild animals, only cattle, sheep and goats. Investors now reallize that this land, still with traditional villages and huge tracts of wildnerness, is what tourists want to see when they visit Africa.

I visited dozens of exclusive, high-end tourist resorts, tented camps and other facilities in Kenya. Most were stashed in the middle of the wilderness and were so creatively laid out that they blended perfectly well with the environment. I had driven, flown and walked into these areas in the company of their proud owners. Occasionally, I found myself flanked by nervous, mid-level managers eager to chip in whenever their employers gave them the right signal. I had listened to numerous stories of the many community projects that some of the proprietors had funded -from the “generosity of my heart,”,as many were eager to point out. These were feel-good stories of the millions spent on community water projects, cattle dips, nursery schools, police stations and so on. This photo shows a water project dug by investors for a community. (Photo by John Mbaria)

But as one rosy picture after another was narrated, one question (which I often failed to ask) lingered in my mind; why did these guys feel so obliged to “donate” projects to people they were in business with? Something, my mind started telling me, didn't add up. But I couldn't figure it out, then.

As I came to learn then, treating oneself to a slice of the exclusive wilderness in Kenya is an expensive, but immensely enjoyable affair. Those lucky enough to tour there are bound to interact with the “big five”-- lions, elephants, rhinos, buffaloes and leopards -- at close quarters. You are bound to spend time out in the middle of nowhere being serenaded by sweet melodies of exotic birds or put to sleep by repetitious howls of hyenas, occasional trumpeting of excited elephants or grunts from hundreds of gnus. But the costs are - to most locals - quite prohibitive --spending a night in the midst of such rare company costs as much as $800 a night.

That the ecotourism concerns generate big cash from selling such services as accommodation, meals, game drives or curios might be an understatement.

Ideally, such income is supposed to be split proportionally between the communal owners of the land and the investors. Indeed, were such an ideal situation formula were to be upheld, it would essentially mean that the community would -- before signing any agreement -- engage the services of a land valuer to assess the value of the resource at hand; seek out experts to do bio-audits and come up with a money value of the wilderness -- its fresh air, sparkling clear water flowing along the streams and the ambiance that goes with setting up a business in such paradise. This would also have meant, comparing this immense value with the investor's investment capital - which in most cases ranged from $70,000 to $150,000. Apparently, what investors had pumped into the agreement was nowhere near the value of the 10,000 acres 25,000 acres of the undisturbed wilderness that relevant communities in Kenya have devoted for the exclusive use of the investors.

But as I dug deeper into the story, I came across casual and serious evidence of how lopsided the cost-benefit system in ecotourism is in Kenya. Initially though, I lacked well-grounded research - carried out in a scientific manner - that I could hang on to. To me, this was important because many of those who owned the ecotourism resorts in Kenya were either powerful or had powerful connections and were likely to create quite a stink, in the event that I published a story that might injure the reputation of their businesses.

The big breakthrough came in late 2007.

(Read the final installment in this series on Monday.)

Article at: http://invw.org/node/1014

Ecotourism: not a win-win for the local people

Investigate West
By John Mbaria
4-26-10

in Dateline Earth Africa Climate Change ecotourism green travel Kenya local communities Sustainability
This is the final installment of a three-part series on how social and economic interactions between people in the developing world and those in the developed world creates serious implications for fragile ecosystems. We invite you to join Kenyan journalist John Mbaria on Earth Day as he takes you on a truly "green" tour that might help you appreciate these issues. He has experienced first hand the struggles of many in Africa who face the consequences of an increasingly warming earth, the destruction of many life-sustaining ecosystems and the failure of political systems and institutions to plan for the consequences of these forces. Mbaria is a trained land use planner and a journalist who previously worked as the environment correspondent with The EastAfrican, a regional weekly read in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. He recently moved to Seattle from Kenya and is a contributing writer to InvestigateWest.

Part three of a series
Through a friend, I contacted officials of a local NGO, the Kenya Community Based Tourism Organization that lobbied for the interests of poor communities who owned land communally and had ventured into Kenya's emerging ecotourism sector. Taiko Lemayan and David Mombo - both officials of the tourism organization - had made a report that detailed, not the rosy picture often painted about ecotourism, but how it had been used to mask exploitation of communities after they set aside part of their immense ranches for wildlife conservation and leasing it to investors. I was keen to see the report, not simply because it was going against the grain, but also because it was feeding into what I already knew - that something was just not right about business dealings between poor communities and hard-nosed foreign and local investors.

And I was not disappointed. The report shattered - to a great extent - the notion that ecotourism is a win-win alternative to mass tourism, that it not only posed lucrative benefits for poor people but was also sensitive to fragile ecosystems while, at the same time, being supportive of the world's desire to conserve wildlife for generations to come.

The researchers had sampled six ecotourism concerns spread across Kenya and in which owners of community ranches (also called group ranches) had devoted between 10,000 acres and 25,000 acres of their land to wildlife conservation. This was the amount of land the communities had handed over to the investors for their exclusive use. This meant that the largely pastoral people had agreed not to graze their huge herds of livestock there or use it in any other way.

As the report pointed out, some of the investors were not paying a dime for this vast land because they had craftily drafted agreements that partly stipulated that the partners had agreed to operate the sanctuaries as not-for-profit outfits. An example is a conservation area located near the Kenya-Tanzanian Border from where one can see the gigantic spread of snow-capped Mt Kilimanjaro. Members of the group ranch had set aside about 12,500 acres of their nearly 200,000 acres for the exclusive use of a private company. But as the report revealed, the agreement the company had with the community did not cover the 12,500 acres devoted for wildlife conservation but only the 16 acres used in setting up the exclusive, high-end camp.

Armed with this information, I contacted the owner, who said that the project was 'genuinely beneficial' to the community and the environment. He also hailed the partnership he had with the community as 'a model' of how communities in arid areas can earn an income from conservation. Information posted on his company's Website at the time showed that it cost between $670 and $865 for a two-night stay there depending on the season. Other reports show that the company had been paying the community $5,300 each year for the lease of 40 acres of the land on which the camp is located, and an additional $500 and $1,200 against the entire amount of gate fees and bed charges paid by tourists annually. The agreement runs for 15 years.

In many such a scenarios, all that local communities hoped to get was the cash generated as annual rent for the few acres that formed the compounds of the tourist resorts. In some cases, the communities also got a certain percentage of the revenue generated annually from selling bed-nights to tourists. The communities did not have a way of determining this and relied on the investor to be forthright and truthful.

Blow by blow, the report continued to paint a gloomy picture of the reality of ecotourism. Interestingly, it stated that some of the legal agreements are fashioned in such a way as to make it almost impossible for communities to disengage from them even when the deals go sour. Examples are areas near the Kenyan coast where communities had accused an investor of not sufficiently marketing the conservancies, but remained entangled in the partnership and could not disengage.

The study also offered evidence that in cases where conservancies are run exclusively by private investors, they have ended up offering ”minimal activities,” which translates into minimal benefits for local communities. As to whether ecotourism concerns create meaningful employment for local communities, the report said that the six sampled facilities employ between 12 and 50 local people each which constituted between 0.2% to 7.3% of populations in the various group ranches. Furthermore, most of those employed worked as untrained hands to perform such tasks as providing security for animals and tourists or to do menial tasks around the camps.

It was also evident that through acts of commission and omission, lawyers as well as representatives of respected environmental organizations, UN bodies, wildlife conservation organizations, and even national wildlife management corporations, had played a role, by either brokering such lopsided pacts or ensuring that they are upheld. Although some may have been driven by a genuine desire to halt the degeneration of key ecosystems in Kenya and elsewhere, they had nevertheless gone ahead to broker agreements that gave communities less lucrative deals that did not specify how liabilities ought to be shared out between the investor and communities.

As a result, there has risen disagreements on who ought to shoulder the responsibility of compensating tourists who get injured or killed by wild animals. Here, the example of a British tourist who was seriously injured by an elephant while jogging in a wildlife sanctuary comes to mind. The sanctuary was set up as a joint venture between local people and the owner of a ranch located near Mt Kenya. When the matter went before a Kenyan court, there was a dispute between the business partners as to who needed to shoulder the responsibility of paying the $1.5 million awarded to the tourist by the court.

Much of what happens in Kenya escapes the attention of a world fascinated by the virtues of ecotourism, in general, and particularly international tourists, who form the main clientele of such facilities. This is mainly because the owners of the tourist camps aggressively market them in flowery, attractive travel literature, which in a way, camouflages the actual situation.

These are difficult stories to report. My story, published in the EastAfrican in 2007, resulted in a lot of outcry and pressure on my editors. But I stood my ground. And now, I would like to invite Seattle residents to give their opinions on ecotourism. If you've participated in tours billed as "green" or helping the local economy or communities, what has been your perception? Do you think they are beneficial, or as beneficial as they could be? If you have not participated in this form of travel, would you consider doing so? Is ecotourism better than international travel without regard to ecological impact? Please give us your thoughts?

Article at: http://invw.org/node/1024