THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

Lastly, the competing interests between national agencies linked to environment like the
NEMA, KWS and the Forestry Services, work with various local government committees. All
these myriad of committees are purported to work at local levels but work parallel to each
other. To such agencies, these local committees are the conduits of participation. However,
these committees are opaque and it was hard to understand who constitutes these local
committees was hard to understand. There are no local community representatives on these
committees. They are there in name, but not in actual presence. The existence of such a
malfunctioned and unrepresentative process creates disintegrated institutional framework in
the management of environmental and biodiversity resources in Kakamega district. When it
comes to participation especially in the terms of production, management as well as benefitsharing
in form of revenue generated from sale of products, licences and related eco-tourism
services, it was found out that no such mechanisms existed at all. It was not therefore,
surprising to learn that the representatives of these agencies at the district and provincial
levels have a very faint appreciation of what obtains locally in the forest and among the forest
communities. It was also not surprising that most of the local communities have an equally
vague perception of what the formal regimes/laws regarding biodiversity are.
8.4 Institutionalism and participation in Kakamega: An out look
In the ensuing section we torch into the future of institutional framing and participation in
respect to the Kakamega and Kenya as a whole. We examine this within the global discourse
on the right of local communities to participate in resources and environmental decisionmaking,
natural resource legislation and management. The Luhya for instance, identify
themselves as the indigenous people of Kakamega forest and we are therefore, going to
examine their right to institutional participation in that context. We also make this
examination in the realm of forest reserve/protected area designing and management. The
following questions are therefore pertinent: why are they created, how are they created and for
whom are they created? The rights of local people are x-rayed in an international framework
for participation of local people in institutional framing in regard to the management of
protected areas. Indigenous people inhabit nearly 20 percent of the planet, mainly in areas
where they have lived for thousands of years. Compared with protected area managers, who
control about 6 percent of the world's land mass, indigenous peoples are the earth's most
important stewards. 690
Eclecticism, institutionalism in forest reserve management
The conventional debates regarding protected area approaches have been dominant in the last
200 years. However, these have tended to see humans and nature as completely different
clusters, often seeking the exclusion of humans from the identified areas of interest,
690 Kothari, A. 2003. Community-oriented Conservation Legislation: Is South Asia Getting Somewhere? In
Innovative Governance: indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Protected Areas, edited by H. Jaireth
and D. Smyth, Pp 1-26. New Dehli: Ane Books.
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