Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:07:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: chris owala
Subject: Re: Regional News
 
 
 
YALA SWAMP -A “Living Museum� of Biodiversity
The Yala Swamp is a vast wetland region (over 200 square km) which cleans and filters waters that flow into Lake Victoria from two major rivers. It has been called a “Living Museum� because it provides critical habitat for endangered fish species that have disappeared from Lake Victoria itself. The critically endangered Sitatunga Antelope finds refuge among the swamps’ papyrus. Birdlife International classifies the Yala Swamp among Kenya’s 60 “Important Bird Areas,� and a 2005 World Bank report concluded that the significance of the region’s biological diversity “cannot be stressed strongly enough.�
 
For centuries, thousands of families have depended on the wetland for clean water, fishing, grazing and agricultural land, and the papyrus that they weave into mats, baskets and thatch roofs. “ “
 
The Yala Swamp conflict started in 2003 when regional government authorities granted a 25-year lease for rice cultivation to Dominion Farms Ltd, a subsidiary of Dominion Group of Companies based in Edmond, Oklahoma USA. Authorities approved the company’s Environmental Impact Assessment specifically for rice irrigation in a 2,300 hectare-area (about 12% of the Yala Swamp territory). But almost immediately Dominion began building irrigation dikes and a weir, airstrips and roads, and announced plans to build a hydroelectric plant and a major aquaculture venture, including fish farms, a fish processin g factory and a fish mill factory, all of which could damage a fragile ecosystem far beyond the designated 2300ha Dominion wants control over 65% of Yala Swamp for its expanded “integrated project.� Some of this area is privately owned by hundreds of families. Some of it is used communally, including the species-rich waters of Lake Kanyaboli which is critical for food security in the region. Action Aid Kenya and the Kenya Land Alliance say the company has in effect privatized the lake and public roads, blocking lake access to over 200 fishermen and impeding access to schools, markets and health clinics. Residents say their protests have been met forcibly with arrests and teargas.
 
Although no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had been approved for these additional Dominion enterprises, they were well underway in early 2006 when scientists in the Kenya Wetlands Forum undertook a “Rapid Assessment of the Yala Swamp Wetlands.� The scientists’ report raises hundreds of unanswered questions about Dominion Farms’ potential impacts on human health and the environment. Likely impacts cited in the report include altering the flow of Yala River, contamination of soils through oil leakages and spillage, pollution of the wetland ecosystem, loss of grazing land, lost of pristine fauna and flora through chemical use and aerial spraying, rising incidences of water- and vector-borne diseases, and social unrest. The report urges Kenya ’s National Environment Management Authority to immediately close down all Dominion Farms activities and requi re new and independent EIAs to be conducted for each separate project proposed by the company.
Many homes have been flooded by the dominion groups of company living women and children homeless in the name of development
Concerns from the community
 
1)  That the management of Dominion Farms Limited have deliberately chosen not to engage or consult the community on its project implementation and development yet they are seriously being affected directly.
 
 
2)  That Dominion Farms Limited being a multi national company is hell-bent on forcefully taking away ancestral land without owners consent nor following legal procedures, which is a serious basic human rights violation.
 
3)  That the company (Dominion Farms Limited) has adopted unorthodox means of using threats through proxies, intimidation, police arrests (on trumped up charges ranging from incitement to violence to malicious damaged to private property ) and bribery as a means of silencing and coercing indigenous people to give away the only  livelihood
 
4)   That our leaders (politicians, church leaders and government officers) have failed us totally in the course of this struggle and are instead working in cahoots with the multinational to disposes community off their land and the only source of livelihood.
 
5) That the local press has been compromised and has adopted partisan approach in reporting the Yala Swamp issues to the favour of Dominion Farms Limited to the disadvantage of the aggressed (community).
 
6)  That the project is being carried out without an independent approved environmental Impact Assessment report done by National Environmental Authority (NEMA).
 
7) That aerial spraying done by the company on the farms using DDT has severe health and environmental impacts with some of the community members already affected.
 
8)  That blockage of river Yala and Lake Kanyaboli and Yala swamp will deny indigenous people access to water (for domestic use and for our animals) and grazing land which will have a very serious economic impact on our livelihood.
 
9)   That clearing of the Yala Swamp papyrus which is the home to many wild life species including endangered ones like statunga and papyrus gonolek and breeding grounds for many birds is of great concern.
 
10)  Clearing of the papyrus will also have negative side economic effects on the indigenous since they have always used these plants to make mats for sale and use locally.
 
11) Dominion group of company once more have use the government to detain 278 head of cattle’s belonging to 40 members of the community at Siaya police station, the owners are to be charged with trespass. The situation at which the animals are kept at the police station is worrying and already some deaths have been reported.
 
How can we help?
Friends of the Yala Swamp, a coalition of residents and organization sand community Initiative Action Group-Kenya thinks that Kenya authorities need to be lobbied to protect people’s livelihoods and the Yala Swamp wetlands, as they are obliged to do under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
On behalf of the above organizations we are appealing for ideas on how the community can be assisted in protecting their livelihoods.
Chris owalla
Community Initiative Action Group –Kenya (CIAG-K)
P.O.BOX 9034, 40103
KISUMU
+254-57-2025714
+254-722-901170
grassrootlink@yahoo.com
ciag-kenya@hotmail.com

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All,
 
I have followed Dominion Farm’s activities since 2002 and even met some of the principals in 2003.
I have also listened and read a lot written by those opposed to and for the project. The politics of Dominion is also all over the place. Just recently, a year or two ago, a few Kenyans on this forum visited with Burgess in Oklahoma and on their return all they wrote were good things about the project. I guess they are quiet now because any comment about Dominion usually elicits cruel and personal attacks. The same maybe true about being on the opposite side of the activists and that’s why the debates usually get personal than factual. Well, I’m going to put on a hard hat and cup in you know where and make some comments that has been causing me leny.
 
Now and then I would read something written by Chris Owalla and I feel like I need to pick up my rungu and go fight on behalf of these people of Yala suffering at the hands of the Dominion Farms.
If I hear that my rwath currently in my village is taken to “jail� as in the case of Yala rwedhi, I would risk arrest to get it out. As I was getting worked up by the last article Owalla wrote, I became a little curious of its scientific nature. When I dug deeper it turned out that parts of the article is right out of
the pages of Global Response website http://globalresponse.org/gra.php?i=2/07. Global Response mission is to “empowers people of all ages, cultures, and nationalities to protect the environment by creating partnerships for effective citizen actionâ€?. By reading Dominion’s mission (“committed to producing the finest quality foods and agricultural by-products —-“), you would know that Global Response and Dominion will always be on the opposite sides. Dominion has to use the land that Global Response wants to be left alone. I do not know the connection between Owalla and Global Response and or Action Aid but my heart skipped a beat when the two names popped up in the same article.  I remember one of them campaigning against Odino Falls. My heart missed a beat because I believe that it’s about time we create our own Kenyan grown activism instead of jumping on the backs of Action Aid and Global Response. We don’t have the same environmental priorities.
Anyway, staying with Owalla’s note he went ahead and listed some concerns from the Yala community and  two of them caught my wang’a:  
9)   That clearing of the Yala Swamp papyrus which is the home to many wild life species including endangered ones like statunga and papyrus gonolek and breeding grounds for many birds is of great concern
 
10)  Clearing of the papyrus will also have negative side economic effects on the indigenous since they have always used these plants to make mats for sale and use locally.
 
Now, deep inside Luoland, in an area where there has never been any profitable tourist activity and Yala people’s main concern is SITATUNGA ANTELOPE and PAPYRUS GONOLEK!!. Well, this reminds me of Leakey days at Kenya Wildlife when human beings were jailed for killing dangerous animals but no punishment was given to the animals that mauled human beings. There has to be a choice and sometimes it’s so obvious what Yala people would chose as opposed to the choice of Global Response. To a certain extent, Yala HOMO SAPIENS maybe as endangered as TRAGECEPHALUS TEKII if poverty is not eliminated. I believe this place is a stone throw away from the home of Kenya Tourism Board MD, ONG’ONGA ACHIENG’ ONEKO and if there was any viable tourism, he would have jumped on it. Growing up on the land of animals I always believed that my relationship with the wild animals is that I am either their dinner or they are mine depending on who overpowers the other.
 
My home is only a few yards from Lake Victoria, habitat of the dangerous OSTEOLAEMUS TETRASPAS (NYANG) and yards and yards of PAPYRUS GONOLEK (TOGO) in which lives some of the longest and largest ngielos (cobra/snakes) I have ever seen in my life. You could see the delight in our eyes when the Lake Victoria receded and the GONOLEK disappeared. In as much as we used the togo to ruwo par (make mats)  it is simply no comparison to the economic impact of the rice project. If that’s the case I would be busy with my par business right now than pounding on this keyboard.
 
I would fight side by side with Owalla against Dominion for concerns 1-8,11  and especially number 7 where chemicals are introduced into the environment. But when Global Response’s concern for birds and animals dilutes the concern of the Yala people, I put my rungu down.  
 
I wanted to educate myself further on the Yala Swamp issue so I searched and run into a biodiversity study done on Lake Kanyaboli by Romulus Abila, a Zoologist from Maseno University
http://iodeweb1.vliz.be/odin/bitstream/1834/1272/1/RAbila2005-11.pdf . In this paper is a picture of the shores of Lake Kanyaboli and anybody who has ever used papyrus to make mats would never use these reeds. Maybe there is another area with better ones but this looks like an area where human beings can only approach by boat. Was this part of the swamp ever used at all by the people of Yala it was impassable before Dominion arrived? Abila’s table shows that only 28% of Yala people are involved in mat business and nobody was listed under endangered species of antelope or birds. Infact Abila is more concerned with threats to biodiversity and the disappearance of cichlids (fulu?) on Laka Kanyaboli.
This scholar has written extensively on the subject and I didn’t read most of it but conservation seems to be the concern.
 
I also read some rapid assessment done by Kenya Wetland Society
 http://www.eawildlife.org/programme_areas/Yala%20Assesment%20Report.pdf. KWS main concern
is that ecological and hydrological functions of the swamp may be permanently damaged and that will put the livelihood of the people around the swamp in danger. Again they mentioned the endangered species, you could see my eyes roll. Well, Kenyans must really like these animals. They should then be demonstrating at the gates of Carnivore restaurant and Safari Park in Nairobi where all kinds of animals are consumed by the tourist after watching the endgaered antelopes at Yala. each day. Infact if Yala people feasted on the antelopes at the Carnivore rate,  they would all be gone and maybe Global Response would not have cared about Yala. The antelopes have no impact on the lives of Yala people. This paper contains good
pictures of the work going on at Domino Farms. Its hard to look at these pictures of high tech breeding of ngege and see something wrong with it. This is the kind of technology I can use on my side of Lake Lolwe.
The assessors also listed about 20 names of stakeholders that they talked to. The list comprises chiefs, councillors, DOs and a handful of ordinary Otieno or Onyango. Everybody had a title including Opinion Leaders, the community was not represented. For an area with over 700,000 people, talking to 20 people is just not statistically significant enough to determine the opinion of the community..
 
One other factor that keep coming up in all these papers is the fact that Dominion is using more acres than they were aloted. While these papers mention that Dominion was only allowed to use 2,300 ha, Dominion on their site http://www.dominion-farms.com/index.html mentions that they are working on 17,000 ha.
There is also mention that Yala Swamp area is actually 38,000 – 52,000 ha but the activist lists only 17,000 ha 65% of which Dominion is using. If the actual ha is between 38-52 which is 45,000 ha then Dominion is only using way less than half of the swamp. That leaves enough room for SITATUNGA ANTELOPE and PAPYRUS GONOLEK which also means that  the animal antelope, the reed plants and the Yala man can co-exist in the same environment if the noise is controlled and there is no pollution. Now these facts needs to be streamlined so that we can get the real story about Yala Swamp. It will be only fair to include a copy of the environmental assessment that was done so that we can see what Dominion is violating.
 
My quest in all this was to find a balance of information that could help me understand the problem Yala people and  Dominion Farms, if any. There seems to be more activism and academia in these studies than a balanced research that is looking at the economic versus environmental benefits. My comments may looks like they favor Dominion but in actuality that’s where the info that I got is pointing me to. Infact if this is the only info out there then there is very little to oppose the project. Activisim is another matter and you can always find something wrong with anything because that’s the engine of activism.
 
Again, its about time we create our own Kenyan grown activism instead of jumping on the backs of Action Aid and Global Response. I would actively campaign for retaining fulu and omena before I blink an eye for antelope or winyo of any kind even if one of them was my pet. Just like the support or technology we get from the west, we have to be able to decide if its good for us be it from Global Response or Dominion. It should not depend on who shouts the loudest and have the political backing.
I was surprised how summarily Owalla dismissed what Prof. Olweny wrote. It would have helped very  much if Owalla offered more info on what Hon. Olweny wrote because that’s what the good professor did on what Owalla wrote. Well, maybe some day I will need Owalla, Global Response, and Action
Aid to protect my village against  some developer but I will make sure we don’t have mixed concerns.
 
I end this long note by asking our scientists and business people to evaluate this project with a balanced mind and find out the truth. Find out how it wa sdone at Ahero Pilot Scheme, Mwea Tebere (sp), Tana River and all those same projects across Kenya and the world.
 
 
Nyanja

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Dear Nyanja

Am not sure whether I know you or not but there is one Nyanja that was copted by Dominion into the stakeholders community  that was put in place by provincial administration two weeks ago, what I want to bring to your attention is that, the issue of yala swamp is very complex, to some people the company is granary as well as source of water for thirst.

Kanyango and kanyamaji  villages   are also affected with the work of this company, for your information the dominion is not keen to invest in corporate social responsibility and that is why the former director was fired and its also difficult for politicians to help the common man, and am not surprised with your piece, one thing that you need to know is that no one owns the community, and Jesus also was controversial because he advocated for the poor, if you see me dismissing Muhoronii MP don’t be surprised because am simply trying to help  the poor get justice, what is worrying is that most of our leaders here in Nyanza are part and parcel of Dominion hence it will be very difficult for them to bridge between the community and the so called investor.
 
Our activism is very positive, for your information its people’s centre, for your information am also coming from alego and I don’t thing you are better placed to speak for community more than me if anything its healthy to take different path depending on your understanding of development,
 
As part of dominion CSR they were to built schools, hospitals and road networks and five years down the lane there is nothing to count, but community has lost livelihoods, cows and goats have died even people. The impact of dominion farms if not checked then effected will be very devastating ,

When a multinational decides to arrest community plus the cows on trump up charges then something is wrong, when you invest in the midst of a community the best thing to do is to have respect for that community even if they are poor and un educated.
 
In One of my discussions with Siaya OCS I do remember   him telling me that the people of kandege have not gone to school that is why they could not get fair deal from the dominion and hence outsiders have taken all the top cream .
 
What we have been asking for is CSR,and strong out growers system to support the farmers,dominion was to give 3000 bags of maize to the community around the swamp or set aside 300 acres for community use but nothing is working on nowise seems the Calvin has gotten short cut way of bribing professionals and political leaders and that is why the conflict will never go..
 
There is no meaning in life for the community that are affected around yala swamp, and the worst problem is that no single member of  this community that is owning title deed hence they are unable to use land to acquire loans from the bank for personal development

The issue of land is very fluid and must be handle with gloves if the conflict is to be solved, The arrest of respected, law-abiding community leaders has had a devastating impact on our communities, particularly on the families of those incarcerated.
 
The community are the peoples of the land – we have a legal and moral obligation to protect for future generations and we ask Government to do what it can to ensure safety of the community and protect their  livelihoods
 
We Support the connection that Indigenous values, knowledge and activities are the environmental measurement that any commercial and industrial activity must be held accountable to in order to preserve ecological biodiversity.

We Support Indigenous Peoples’ right to “free, prior and informed, consent� as the basis of protecting the ecological biodiversity of their territories.

We Condemn the violations of the government plus dominion and call for the immediate and unconditional  dropping of trump charges on the community members. The three-Charles Onyango Apiyo, Aloice Waka Otieno and Otieno Okumu were arraigned in Siaya court on Monday 21st April 2008 before Siaya Principle Magistrate Mr.Mwaura. They were charged with malicious damage to property, tresspass on private property and grazing.

Chris owalla

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From:chris owala
Date:Sun, 18 May 2008 07:22:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:Re: DOMINION FARMS AND YALA SWAMP