222893e

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND WATERnational conference on climate change and asked if he could help. Staffof the Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit then madea field visit and a rapid environmental and economic appraisal of thecatchment, which stimulated the creation of a new management organizationby the Government of Kenya, called Imarisha Naivasha. In 2012Imarisha produced its Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP)2012-17, requiring the development of a monitoring programme forlake health and a database of information to support the “enablingconditions for effective water regulation and governance, sustainableland and natural resource use and sustainable development in the lakeNaivasha Basin”.The third series of events came from European retailers – thedirect buyers of cut flowers – who began to fund small projectsthat would act as demonstration successes, to be repeated across thecatchment as Imarisha and the initial PES grew to facilitate catchment-widesustainability. Some of these ‘early wins’ were projectsfrom UK retailers and Dutch and Swedish governments, fundedthrough Imarisha. Others were directly funded by two Europeanretailers that prize their commitment to sustainability – the GermanREWE Group and Swiss Coop – through the universities ofLeicester and Nairobi. These universities have the longest-runningresearch partnership at Lake Naivasha, since 1982, which has beenresponsible for most of the ecological understanding of the lakedescribed above.The Coop-funded project, entitled ‘Sustainable Roses and Water’,focused on promoting water efficiency among users and trainingthem to recognize it as a finite resource. The central part of this hasbeen two kinds of five-day residential training camps for horticulturalworkforce officials, WRUA committee members and membersof self-help groups (SHGs) that are also being assisted by the physicaldemonstration projects.The first kind of training camp has been for ‘Water Ambassadors’,where people are taught about the water cycle from global to local scales,about cleaning wastewater for environmental acceptability, purifyingraw water for domestic use and about the ecology of Lake Naivasha.Teacher Josphat Macharia training Water Friendly FarmersImage: Nic PaciniThe second kind has been for ‘Water Friendly Farmers’,teaching people to farm in the semi-arid conditions ofmuch of the basin, using water harvesting techniques forcrops and drinking, self-sufficiency of livestock keepingand waste reuse. This latter training has been undertakenby a teacher, Josphat Macharia, on his 5-acre plot thatsustains his extended family with much output to spare.It has been calculated that his land can feed 30 people and,as such, his methods provide a clear beacon for future landmanagement in the face of increased pressure from climatechange. Trainees have undertaken to go home and furthertrain another 10 people each in their workplace, homelocation or church community.The training camps have also supported members ofSHGs that were in receipt of physical improvements.These have taken the themes of erosion control, waterefficiency and water quality. Erosion control projectshave built dams in dry gullies that experience flash floodsto hold back sediment from entering the lake, and introducedtree-planting schemes on steep land in headwaters.Water efficiency projects have provided water harvestingfor schools where the teachers and governors have agreedto create vegetable plots and tree nurseries with the children.They have also targeted SHGs growing vegetableswhere water is in limited supply, such as a pan dam for awomen’s group that leases and farms 10 acres of arid landand a youth group that built its own greenhouse but couldonly access water from streams far away. Water qualityprojects have provided cleaner water for collection fromdams in an innovative way that also provides biodiversityrestoration, funded through the REWE Group.The REWE Group project, ‘Papyrus Restoration’,focuses on projects that restore the papyrus fringe aroundLake Naivasha. Artificial islands are being planted onshorein ponds with papyrus. When established, these will beanchored offshore in selected locations, to spread andgrow into an established swamp to protect the lake fromsediment and enhance fish growth and reproduction.Restoration in the catchment is focused on a few of themany artificial dams left over from colonial farming, nowin disrepair. Projects have assisted SHGs with fencing andbuilding materials; the groups have erected the fencing,strengthened the dams and built cattle drinking troughswith water taps below the dams. The communities thatsurround the dams can now access water no longercontaminated by cattle and cleaned by the natural wetlandplants that had been eliminated by grazing or trampling.Water cooperation in the futureBy the middle of 2013, all the initiatives designed tounite water users in the Naivasha basin are bearing fruit;although each action is small, they are like a pebble in apond, spreading ripples ever outward. There is an enormousamount still to do, to achieve a sustainable basinwith inhabitants no longer in poverty. Imarisha’s SDAPvision – “A clean, healthy and productive environmentand sustainable livelihoods in the Lake Naivasha basinfor the benefit of the present and future generations”– is at the beginning of a long road to achievement.[ 259 ]