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Naivasha Virtual Fieldcourse

Post-independence

Nowadays, the Lake Naivasha Basin is home to nearly 1 million people (there are no simple means of verifying this figure). Most settled here after leaving their homes in rural areas in other parts of the country in post-independence resettlement schemes as former colonial ranches were sold to government and split into small plots; others due to political unrest, environmental degradation, or lack of farmland. Many people has moved into the area seeking employment since the growth of the horticultural industry, which started in the 1980s.

Most belong to the Kikuyu tribe, which traditionally forms the backbone of the national farming community; others - particularly employed in fishing or horticulture - are from western Kenya, such as the Luo (fishing),  Kalenjin (pastoralists as well as small holder farmers), Luhya, and other smaller tribes. Population growth in the basin has been very high in recent years due to this in-migration, comparable to the growth of large cities like Nairobi (ca. 9% per year), among the fastest growing regions in the whole of Africa.

Many people moved here to seek jobs in the large horticultural industry that developed in the Basin starting from the mid 1980s, while many others tried to open small commercial activities in the constantly-growing lakeside settlements. Those who fail to obtain employment and have no success in business, attempt to exploit common natural resources such as fish, pastures, timber and firewood. These resources are now under considerable pressure from local residents. Available agricultural soil is particularly scarce. In the eastern and northern farming areas, at the foot of the mountains, farming plot size is decreasing (due to splitting by fathers amongst their sons) sometimes to less than 2 acres. Such a size that can only sustain a healthy family with difficulty farmed in a conventional way, but a local teacher/farmer has shown how 5 acres can support 5-8 families with careful, suatsinable farming (Ndabibi Environment Education Centre)

As a result of this situation, Naivasha Basin residents embrace a variety of modes of life, not all of them legal and/or sustainable from the point of view of the renewability of the natural resources that make them possible. Young lakeside residents try to fish in the main lake, both legally and illegally, supplementing this activity with other jobs. Cattle and goat herding is also on the rise, and often the animals are taken down to the lakeshore causing damage to the riparian vegetation. Game poaching is unfortunately quite common, mainly in the riparian acacia forest. The lake riparian zone is affected by others trying to open up small vegetable gardens within communal or even private land bordering the lake; an activity that represents a threat for water quality and that has been banned with a voluntary agreement by the LNRA.

To reduce impacts from unsustainable modes of living, the NBSI conducted workshops with local youth and retrained several of them from poachers into ecotourism guides and biodiversity monitors.