GIATHI: Kenya cannot afford to weaken protection for public forests

Kenya Cannot Afford to Weaken Protection for Public Forests
Article by Caroline Giathi – Communications and Advocacy Officer at the Green
Belt Movement Kenya’s public forests are once again at a defining moment.

The Senate’s passage of the Forest Conservation and
Management (Amendment) Bill, 2025 now places some of the country’s most
important ecosystems one presidential signature away from a significant legal
and environmental shift.

While the Bill contains several positive reforms, its
proposed amendments to Section 56(2) raise serious concerns about the future
protection of Kenya’s public forests.

The amendment introduces provisions allowing easements for
public roads, public installations, and wayleaves for public utilities within
forest areas.

Though framed as administrative facilitation for
development, the implications are far deeper.

For decades, Kenya’s public forests have been protected
because developments within them were treated as exceptional, heavily
restricted, and subject to public scrutiny.

The amendment risks changing that principle by formally
opening legal pathways for infrastructure development inside protected forests.

This is not a theoretical concern. Kenya already has a
painful history of forests being threatened in the name of development and
public interest.

The Karura Forest has continued to survive attempted land
grabbing and commercial development since the 1990s only because citizens,
environmental defenders, and Professor Wangari Maathai resisted powerful
political and private interests. Without that resistance, Karura would likely
have been fragmented beyond recovery.

Today, similar pressure continues across multiple public
forests. The Ngong Road Forest faces constant pressure from road expansion and
urban growth.

The Aberdare Forest and Mau Forest Complex, both critical
water towers, continue to face threats from encroachment, logging, and
infrastructure pressure. Coastal ecosystems such as Arabuko Sokoke Forest
remain vulnerable despite their globally significant biodiversity.

The pattern is often gradual: a road enters first, then
utility lines, then commercial activity, and eventually permanent
infrastructure.

Piece by piece, the ecological integrity of the forest
weakens until protection exists only in name. Section 56(2) risks accelerating
this trajectory by normalising infrastructure inside forests through easements
and wayleaves. Equally concerning is what the amendment does not provide.

The Bill does not establish strict ecological thresholds
that automatically prohibit developments in sensitive forests.

It does not guarantee legally enforceable public objection
mechanisms before approvals are granted.

It does not ensure mandatory public access to Environmental
Impact Assessment documents early enough for meaningful participation. Nor does
it clearly define limits on what may qualify as “public installations.”

This ambiguity creates dangerous room for abuse. Without
stronger safeguards, nearly any project could potentially be framed as serving
the public interest, roads, telecommunications towers, substations, pipelines,
tourism facilities, or future urban expansion.

The danger is not simply one project. It is the precedent.
Once infrastructure inside forests becomes normalized through law, resisting
future encroachment becomes increasingly difficult. What was once exceptional
gradually becomes administrative routine.

This comes at a dangerous moment for Kenya. The country is
already experiencing worsening climate shocks: prolonged droughts, destructive
floods, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and rising temperatures.

Forests remain among Kenya’s most important natural defenses
against these crises.

They regulate rainfall, recharge rivers, stabilize soils,
absorb carbon emissions, cool cities, and sustain livelihoods.

The Aberdare Forest and Mau Forest Complex are not merely
forests; they are national water towers supporting agriculture, hydroelectric
power, and domestic water systems across the country.

Urban forests such as Karura Forest and Ngong Road Forest
provide some of the last remaining green lungs for rapidly expanding cities
facing worsening air pollution and urban heat. Public forests are also
constitutionally protected public land held in trust for present and future
generations. They are not idle spaces waiting for infrastructure expansion.

They are life-support systems. This is why Kenyans must look
beyond the technical language of the Bill and understand what is truly at
stake. The debate is no longer only about one amendment.

It is about whether Kenya is slowly redefining forests from
protected ecological commons into spaces available for negotiated development
whenever economic or political pressure arises.

As the Bill awaits presidential assent, this is a defining
moment for environmental governance in Kenya. The President has a
constitutional and moral responsibility to consider not only short-term
development demands but also the country’s long-term ecological security.

Decisions made today will shape Kenya’s water security,
climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health for generations. But
regardless of whether the Bill is assented to or challenged, citizens must
remain vigilant.

History has shown that public forests survive when citizens
actively defend them. Kenyans must continue scrutinizing proposed developments,
demanding transparency, participating in public consultations, reviewing
Environmental Impact Assessments, and holding institutions accountable. Because
the real battle for forests is often fought not only in Parliament, but during
implementation.

Professor Wangari Maathai warned that environmental
destruction often begins quietly, hidden beneath the language of progress and
development. By the time the consequences become visible, the damage is often
irreversible.

That warning now confronts Kenya once again. Section 56(2)
may appear to be a technical legal amendment.

But in practice, it risks shifting Kenya from a system where
forest encroachment is resisted to one where it is increasingly processed,
licensed, and normalized. And once protection becomes permission, reclaiming
what is lost may become impossible.

Giathi is a communications and advocacy officer at the Green Belt Movement