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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND WATERthe plan and members of LNRA, on the grounds that they did not representthe interests of all stakeholders, and it was stalled just as it becameapparent that the lake was continuing to deteriorate. Evidence of itsecosystem disruption by exotic species and loss of papyrus was alreadyclear, but now its eutrophication – enrichment – by the combinedimpacts of soil erosion from catchment smallholder cultivations, nutrientrun-off from lakeside farms, and the impact of thousands of peopleliving without sanitation within a mile of the lake’s edge, was madeobvious by cyclical blooms of noxious blue-green algae.Strengthening water cooperationThe first organization to take a positive initiative towards sustainablemanagement of the lake in the new century – reviving watercooperation – was the Lake Naivasha Growers Group (LNGG),consisting of the major horticultural companies, some of whomwere also members of LNRA. LNGG commissioned consultants toconduct an accurate water balance, which could form the basis ofa sustainable abstraction policy. By this time it was known that the2002 Water Act would soon become law, so the policy could bedeveloped under this and not the stalled Management Plan.The Water Act, implemented in 2005, was the country’s firstlegislation to enable community participation since independencein 1963. It established a new authority, WRMA, with sevenbasins within Kenya. WRMA was charged with establishing WaterResource User Associations (WRUAs), to comprise all ‘legitimatestakeholders’ for subcatchments within these basins. The catchmentof Lake Naivasha is within the Rift Valley basin with 12 WRUAs, themost advanced of which is the Lake Naivasha WRUA (LaNaWRUA),due to the history of moves to achieve sustainable use of the lake.LaNaWRUA was registered as a society in June 2007 and elected itsfirst officials in October; in 2008 it signed a memorandum of understandingwith WRMA to promote sustainable water managementin the catchment; in April 2009 it submitted a Water AllocationPlan and Sub-Catchment Management Plan (SCMP) based on thecommissioned hydrological study.A floating island planted with papyrus at the wastewater lagoon of one ofFinlays’ flower farmsImage: David M. HarperWRUAs are open to membership of any water user whohas or should have a permit for extraction. LaNaWRUAhas six categories of water users – individuals, waterservice providers, tourist operators, irrigators (dividedinto groundwater and surface water), commercial users(such as fish farming, power generation), and pastoralists.The executive committee consists of two representativesfrom each category, elected by category members.LaNaWRUA has non-user members, called ObserverMembers, without voting rights. LaNaWRUA recognizesa wide range of stakeholders and seeks to enrol them inlocal environmental management. It recently prepared anSCMP which lists 42 stakeholders represented by otherWRUAs. These were slower to become constituted thanLaNaWRUA, but by 2010 all were in operation, beingguided under an ‘umbrella’ of all WRUAs, by Naivasha.Over the same period, LNGG began to develop aPayment for Ecosystem Services (PES) project. This wasoriginally conceived as a means of restoring the papyrusthat had been destroyed around the lake, so that thegrowers would have a clear link between their paymentsand the ecosystem service they were restoring. It waslater developed into payments for upper catchmentsmall farmers at the foot of the Aberdare mountains,who were thus encouraged to grow trees and terracetheir land to arrest erosion. The scheme has provedsuccessful with the farmers, who have developed alternativelivelihood streams as well as holding back theirsoils, but it has not been possible to measure any subsequentimprovements in the river or lake waters.Water cooperation blossomsDuring these developments, Kenya experienced aprolonged drought. Between mid-2007 and the end of2009 the water levels of Lake Naivasha dropped almost3 metres, to a level that had not been experienced since1946. This aroused international concern from themedia, irrigators, the customers of the cut flower producersand their governments. The WRUAs were too youngand inexperienced to respond with the required rapidity,but three series of events were unfolding that helpedthem to manage the crisis and come out stronger.Firstly, organizations alarmed by news coverage suchas European governments and international non-governmentalorganizations like the World Wide Fund forNature (WWF), were encouraged to contribute to individualaspects of the solution. WWF and LNGG fundedLaNaWRUA to complete the first ever basin-wide surveyof water abstractors, which found that almost 97 per centwere either unlicensed or their licences had expired. Allthe WRUAs, as agents for WRMA, began registeringabstractors and collecting their licence fees. LaNaWRUAorganized and agreed with abstractors, through the otherWRUAs, a ‘traffic lights’ system of lake water use: at thered level all abstraction ceased; at amber, abstraction wasreduced; and at green, abstractions could continue to thelevel that the licence allowed.Secondly, in early 2010 Kenyan Prime Minister RailaOdinga talked with HRH the Prince of Wales at an inter-[ 258 ]