THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

development. The 9 th National Development Plan recognizes the importance of sustainable
use and conservation of biodiversity. Many other initiatives include conservation and
sustainable use, deliberately addressing the obligations of the convention.
We ought to note that Kenya as a country plays a central role in the international
environmental organisation. The country is host to the United Nations Environmental
Protection (UNEP) headquarters as well as many other influential organisations and
multinational actors in the realm of environment. This inevitably makes Kenya consider
biodiversity restoration as an important undertaking. It must also be mentioned that being a
tourist destination to many western nationals, Kenya has been adopted as a leading tourist
resort base. For this reason, the diversity in this Country’s wildlife has attracted a number of
international interests. For instance, due to international pressure the Kenyan Wildlife Service
ingrained the provisions of the CITES in the Wildlife and Conservation Act by banning game
hunting and revoking all licences. 589
More recently, concerns over biodiversity management have assumed prominence in Kenya’s
environmental resource regime. In this context, the government of Kenya has undertaken
partnership with many leading transnational actors in this area. These partnerships have
resulted into the development of long-term strategic plans and programmes for restoration and
management of biodiversity. The process has in most cases seen the integration of
biodiversity into the relevant cross-sectoral plans, programmes and policies. Such policies and
plans have also attracted wide donor funding which to a great extent has oscillated
biodiversity restoration in the country.
In this study we wanted to further find out what accounts for increased international interest in
the Kenyan biodiversity enterprise. Among others the interest of this study was to investigate
the impact of international donor initiatives in the biodiversity restoration in Kenya. We found
out that some of the leading drivers in the biodiversity enterprise such as INCRAF, OXFAM,
WWF, GTZ and ICUN among others are deeply rooted in the Kenyan biodiversity sector.
However, a substantial number of the International NGOs evaluated were largely interested in
the medicinal and food plants regeneration, ecosystem stability, bio-prospecting and
ecosystem services in the forest belts of Kenya. But what is not in place currently is a policy
streamlining NGOs working in the biodiversity area.
In most cases monitoring reports reviewed by this study revealed that, many of the
international environmental NGOs had a strong orientation to a wider political economy of
increased forest excisions and bio-prospecting. This observation however, tends to oscillate
uncomfortably with the underpinned interests of the state aimed at portraying a picture of
improved image in the state of biodiversity in the country, particularly in the forestry sector.
This is well articulated in the First and Second Country Reports on the implementation of the
Convention on Biodiversity to the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP).
589 Thayer,W.H. 2004. Fight to keep Kenya's wildlife off Dinner Tables: Poachers are Snaring in National parks.
Chronicle Foreign Service. San Francisco.
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