Great Rift Valley, Kenya, Sep 6 (IPS) – Between 2001 and 2022, Mau Forest lost about 533 square kilometers of forest due to deforestation. Now, a group of women, supported by the Paran Women Group, are preparing to plant 100,000 saplings this rainy season to restore the forest. The Great Rift Valley is part of the continental mountain system that runs across Kenya from north to south. It is a beautiful and diverse landscape, including dramatic cliffs, highland mountains, cliffs and gorges, lakes and savannah. It is also home to one of Africa’s largest wildlife reserves, the Masai Mara National Reserve.
The 400,000-hectare Mau Forest Complex, about 170 km northwest of Nairobi, is the largest indigenous forest in East Africa. It is also the largest of the country’s five basins, with 12 rivers flowing into five major lakes.
More than 10 million people depend on the river. Its impressive portfolio of rare plant and animal species is unfortunately a magnet for illegal activity. Forest monitoring groups say 25 percent of the forest has been lost between 1984 and 2020, and the Mau Forest overall has lost 19 percent of its tree cover (about 533 square kilometers) between 2001 and 2022.
“Paran Women Group is committed to restoring the Mau Forest. To stop the pace and severity of destruction and degradation, we approached the government through the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and were granted access to 200 acres of the Maasai Mau Forest block, one of the 22 blocks that make up the entire Mau Forest Complex. There are 280 water storage facilities within the complex,” Naiyan Kiplagat, executive director of Paran Women Group, told IPS.
“We started the restoration work in January this year and have already covered 100 acres. We have now prepared 70,000 saplings and plan to collect 30,000 more from women’s groups to reach our target of 100,000 tree saplings. Once the rainy season starts, we will cover the remaining 100 acres.”
In Maa, the language spoken by the Maasai, Paran means ‘to come together to help each other.’ The Paran Women Group is an organization of women from the indigenous Maasai and Ogiek peoples.
The organization is comprised of 64 women’s groups and 3,718 members. The group, which is united against double marginalization and patriarchy, started small in 2005 and continues to grow and expand its base and conservation activities.
Inheriting the wisdom of their ancestors, they rely on indigenous knowledge and innovation in conservation, reforestation, reforestation and all other land restoration efforts, while promoting gender equality. The Paran Women Resource Center is located in Eor Ewuaso, a remote rural village in Ololunga, Narok Sout sub-county, Narok County, Rift Valley.
Women hold title deeds to vast tracts of land, a remarkable achievement in a minority community where women have little autonomy and land is owned and controlled by men. They have seven satellite resource centers within the vast county that focus on providing women with access to productive resources.
The center is a hub of knowledge and action to relieve pressure on the threatened Mau Forest by promoting conservation and livelihood activities such as sustainable agriculture, beekeeping, beadwork, and briquettes for energy-efficient cooking. More than 617 households are already using efficient, energy-efficient stoves.
“We are environmentalists with a passion for gender equality. Gender-based violence, such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage, is rampant in indigenous communities. The most recent case was that of a nine-year-old girl. We are generally marginalized in society and, worse, our culture has few rights for women and girls. We help our children go to school by paying school fees through income-generating activities,” she says.
Patrick Lemanian, a resident of Olorunga, says the Paran women “raise chickens and sell food like pumpkins, vegetables and millet. They also sell beaded jewellery. Maasai beaded jewellery is unique, beautiful and very marketable. There is also a popular Maasai market in Nairobi where they sell these beads and other Maasai items like sandals. The women here face no resistance from the community. We have suffered for years without rain and we know that saving the forest means saving the community.”
Nayan says indigenous communities depend on natural resources such as forests, rivers and biodiversity for survival. The ongoing climate and biodiversity crises affect them the most as a community. Women are worse off because they have no assets.
“The Masai are pastoralists. During the long dry season, the men take all their livestock and move for three years, leaving behind their wives and children. The women own nothing, so the family is left with nothing,” she says.
Naiyan, an Ogiek who married a Maasai, says the Ogiek are not doing any better. As hunters and gatherers, they are also struggling to survive in an ecosystem devastated by human activity and climate change, and are learning to pursue livelihoods outside their native way of life, such as selling poultry and farming. The men do not raise or care for poultry, because they consider it of little value to them. They raise large livestock such as cattle and goats.
“The role of indigenous groups, especially women, in environmental protection cannot be overemphasized, especially because they can combine conservation activities with income-generating activities. They educate and support each other, and their children go to school, breaking the cycle of poverty associated with minorities due to historical injustice and inequality,” says Beska Ikenya, a gender and natural resources educator.
“Indigenous peoples and communities have indigenous knowledge and leadership that only they have as stewards of their lands and waters, and they have interacted closely with ecosystems since time immemorial. Each generation preserves this knowledge and passes it on to the next. When Indigenous peoples and communities lead conservation efforts, they are never wrong. They understand which species grew where and when.”
The Paran Women Group’s tree nursery is home to 27 indigenous species, including: Croton macrostasius, Syzygium cumini, Prunus africa and Olia AfrikaansOf the 150,000 tree seedlings already planted this year, 112,500 have survived and are growing well.
According to a 2021 joint report by the International Working Group on Indigenous Issues and the International Labour Organization, indigenous peoples are responsible for protecting approximately 22% of the Earth’s surface and 80% of its biodiversity.
Paran Women Group has won a series of international awards without going unnoticed. In 2018, they won the Rural Survival Award at the World Women Foundation Summit. In 2020, they won the International Leadership Award at the International Indigenous Women’s Forum. Last year, at COP28 in the UAE, they won the Gender Justice Climate Solutions Award and are preparing to win another international award in October 2024.
This article was published with the support of the Open Society Foundations.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal Source: Inter Press Service
