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E
conomic
D
evelopment
and
W
ater
tion (about two thirds of the demand), but also in the
Olkaria Geothermal Power Station, which generates
around 15 per cent of Kenya’s power and is the largest
single user of lake water.
It was widely believed that the lake was over-abstracted
because by the middle of the first decade of this century,
there was no overall monitoring of abstractions –
although the major commercial abstractions, being
important sources of revenue for the Water Resource
Management Authority (WRMA), were subject to scru-
tiny. While the Government of Kenya had created a
National Environmental Management Authority under the
1999 Environmental Management and Coordination Act,
and theWRMA through the 2002Water Act, enforcement
of regulations proved to be weak. Fuelled by media arti-
cles in Kenya and the UK, conservation agencies and the
public perceived two growing threats to the lake and its
biodiversity: human population growth leading to physical
pressure on the shores, and untreated wastewater flowing
into the lake from industries and settlements.
The Lake Naivasha Riparian Association (LNRA), the
group representing lakeside landowners, had produced a
Management Plan, which formed the basis of the decla-
ration of the site as a Ramsar Wetland of International
Importance, in 1995. This Plan was approved by the
Kenyan Government and officially gazetted in 2004
under the 1999 Environment Act, resulting in the forma-
tion of a dedicated management committee. However,
many people (including pastoralists, smallholder farmers
and residents of Naivasha’s informal settlements), whose
livelihoods depend on the ecosystem services of the lake,
were excluded from the consultation process and from
representation on the committee. A temporary coalition
of pastoralists lodged a successful court injunction against
America, arrived in 1988. It thrived because it had no competition from
native plants, particularly the Blue Water Lily that had disappeared.
The nature of agriculture around the lake began to change after
1975. By 1995, small farms had given way to several square kilo-
metres of irrigated horticulture in large units, with output (flowers
and vegetables) air-freighted to Europe. The cultivated area had
doubled by the start of the twenty-first century, and this land use
change brought a tenfold rise in the population of horticultural
estate workers and their dependents, to 250,000.
The most significant impact of this growing agricultural inten-
sification was the abstraction of water from the lake, groundwater
and rivers. No doubt, smallholder use of water higher in the catch-
ment also increased, but this was ‘invisible’ to journalists and other
visitors. Scientific studies in the 1990s showed the abstractions
from the catchment to result in fluctuations of the lake 2-3 metres
below its natural levels. The most visible and ecologically damaging
consequence of this was the disappearance of the fringing papyrus
around the lake. Stranded on dry land, large animals like buffalo and
cattle were able to knock down the plants’ heads and eat them. The
tracks they made enabled smaller animals to follow and graze any
regrowth, so the swamps were progressively eliminated.
The loss of the fringing swamps meant that the incoming rivers,
heavy with sediment from inappropriate farming upstream,
discharged their load directly into the lake instead turning it into
new swamp plant growth which would release nutrients slowly. It
became clear that the lake – browner in colour, with floating mats
of exotic plants and an edge no longer protected by papyrus – was
in urgent need of careful management and restoration.
Stumbling conservation initiatives
As the century drew to a close, the most important issue for Naivasha
was the increasing water use by the rapidly-growing industry of
commercial flower and vegetable farming for export. Demand for
fresh water was intense, not only for intensive horticultural irriga-
Distributing trees to farmers, who are encouraged to grow trees and terrace their land to arrest erosion
Image:Nic Pacini