Karanja, Francis

With increasing demands on the water of the Pangani River Basin, coupled with a decreasing catchment runoff due to climate change, water resources are becoming increasingly scarce, and leading to conflicts among users. The objectives of the study described here were to provide first-cut estimates of the value of water in different uses, as well as to review various issues and economic tools pertaining to water resource allocation and financing mechanisms for Integrated River Basin Management.

The Loita/Purko Naimina Enkiyio forest is estimated to cover an area of 330 km2 in Kenya and serves several functions within the Loita Maasai community. When a change of the forest tenure to a reserve threatened this community, they challenged the decision and were successful in having the decision rescinded. Security of tenure can be considered the single most important factor in the sustainable management of natural resources. This publication compares three different tenure regimes and discusses how they might affect the local Maasai community.

Produced by IUCN's Eastern Africa Programme, this publication aims to investigate the extent to which communities have been provided with economic incentives to become involved in sustainable forest management in Eastern and Southern Africa, and how far perverse incentives and disincentives encouraging forest degradation and loss have been overcome. This study concludes that there is an urgent need to provide economic incentives, and it highlights a number of policy recommendations.