- Two years into its implementation, the Eldoret-Iten Water Fund (EIWF) in Kenya is helping to protect vital water resources, restore degraded forests and farmlands and work with local communities.
- While the EIWF has seen considerable success so far, several hurdles have emerged — including disputes with the Sengwer Indigenous community.
- The issues with the Sengwer community stem at least in part from decades of controversy over cultural identity and names, dating to colonial times.
- Despite these challenges, the EIWF, administered through The Nature Conservancy, has made progress and local farmers say they are hopeful about the future; for further details on the EIWF, see Part I of this story.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Kenya’s Eldoret-Iten Water Fund. Part 1 is available here.
Two years into the program, Kenya’s Eldoret-Iten Water Fund (EIWF) has seen considerable success so far in its aims to restore degraded forests and protect vital water resources for communities in the region. But several hurdles have emerged.
One is with wetland restoration. “Wetlands pose a unique challenge because they are located in river valleys and take longer to recover, restore and rehabilitate,” explained Fredrick Kihara, Africa Water Funds director for The Nature Conservancy, which implements the EIWF. “Many of these wetlands are bordered by farms, and over time, some have been drained for farming.” He noted that while wetlands may appear large on paper, the reality on the ground often shows a much smaller area remaining intact.
Watershed manager Stephen Kibet attributed some of the difficulties in wetland restoration to Kenya’s land tenure system. “The way land is demarcated in Kenya includes environmentally sensitive areas, such as wetlands. This creates issues when trying to intervene, as the land is often privately owned, and farm boundaries extend too close to rivers,” he said. The lack of riparian buffer zones further complicates efforts to protect these vital ecosystems.
Recognizing these challenges, TNC has emphasized community engagement to help shift local perceptions about wetland protection. One strategy they’ve adopted is payment for ecosystem services, known as PES, in which farmers are incentivized with fruit trees for protecting watershed areas.
“One issue we face is resistance from farmers who fear losing arable land. But we emphasize that even if they’re farming near riparian zones, conservation is key. Once they understand the benefits, they’re more likely to cooperate,” Kibet added.
Another challenge for TNC is aligning their projects with crop-growing seasons, which have become unpredictable due to climate change, Kihara said. “For example, maize planted in April takes about five months to harvest. During that time, it’s impossible to create terraces or implement other conservation measures,” he noted.
In addition, many community members across different parts of Eldoret are still unfamiliar with the EIWF and its benefits. Some farmers say they aren’t getting the water they need. Eunice Chelagat, an 82-year-old commercial farmer from Ruyobei village, faces water scarcity, despite having purchased a pond liner from EIWF for her 50,000-liter (13,000-gallon) water pan.
“Water is a major problem here. During the dry season, the soil cracks, but when it rains, there’s water everywhere. I’ve noticed that planting trees helps bring the rain, but I need more guidance on long-term water storage solutions,” she said. Chelagat hopes to learn more about soil management and water diversion techniques for rainwater storage.
But these challenges perhaps pale compared with tensions raised within the Sengwer Indigenous community.
The Sengwer people’s ancestral home
The Sengwer people, a hunter-gatherer community, are traditional inhabitants of the Cherangany ecosystem’s forest blocks, and the EIWF focus area overlaps with their current home in the Embobut Forest. Not surprisingly, the Sengwer community expressed skepticism when they first learned about the EIWF. Many in the community had already been displaced from other forest blocks by the Kenya Forest Service, which has only heightened their concerns about further encroachments on their rights and land.
“As a community, we’ve endured a long history of land injustices, including forceful evictions perpetrated by the Kenyan government,” said Elias Kimaiyo, a land and environmental human rights defender in the Sengwer community. “Whenever donor funds come in, the government uses that as a tool to kick our people out of their ancestral lands.” At the start of this collaboration, the Sengwer told TNC they couldn’t work with the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry because on several occasions in the past, the ministry, through the Kenya Forest Service, forcefully evicted the Sengwer from Embobut Forest. Kimaiyo termed Kenya Forest Service guards as human rights violators who have been evicting them from their ancestral home — the forest — for conservation purposes.
He noted European Union involvement in some of the issues of the past. EU funding had supported the Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Program , aimed at protecting groundwater supplies in the region. However, in January 2018, after a Sengwer community member was killed and another injured in a shooting by Kenya Forest Service guards, the then-EU Ambassador to Kenya Stefano A. Dejak announced the suspension of program funding and maintained the EU’s commitment to ensuring the rights of Indigenous people are observed. For two years, there was peace in the community — before evictions resumed.
Despite the community’s concerns, the Sengwer people signed their Indigenous People Action Plan for inclusion in the EIWF project on Aug. 17, 2023. But not everything has gone smoothly.
According to Kimaiyo, the Sengwer were allocated 5 million Kenyan shillings ($39,000) for their projects after they signed an Indigenous People’s Action Plan (IPAP) in 2023 — less than the 15 million shillings ($116,000) the Ogiek and Cherangani Indigenous communities received for their projects.
The Sengwer project includes growing tree seedlings for distribution across the area. “They allocated us 5 million KES, but that money has not been effectively utilized for our benefit,” according to Kimaiyo. “For instance, it took nearly a year to procure some tree nursery equipment, and the last consignment only arrived two months ago. We haven’t even been able to utilize any of those tools yet. The only support was that they provided funding for four months to pay the youth working in our indigenous tree nursery that we had established on our own, compensating them at a rate of 410 Kenyan shillings [$3.18] per day.”
The Sengwer have two half-acre tree nurseries, one for native tree seedlings and the other for fruit tree seedlings. The native tree nursery is already established and is located on a leased farm. The other piece of land meant for fruit trees is located in a low-altitude area called Kibsero, Marakwet west, and it is yet to be fully established.
In addition, Kimaiyo said the Sengwer have not been paid for tree seedlings. In July of this year, the community supplied the Eldoret Water and Sanitation Company, ELDOWAS, with 45,000 indigenous tree seedlings, valued at approximately 800,000 shillings ($6,200). Kimaiyo said payment was initially expected a month after the seedlings were delivered, but delays have prevented timely compensation. The seedlings provided included varieties such as mahogany, cedar and rosewood.
According to Kimaiyo, the “sidelining” of the Sengwer community stems from their ongoing struggle for ancestral land and their awareness of their rights as an Indigenous people. “Many choose not to engage with us fully, labeling the Sengwer as troublesome simply because we advocate for our rights and seek answers. They resist the emergence of success stories from Indigenous communities.”
The most recent EIWF steering committee meeting took place Sept. 20, but Kimaiyo and his colleagues chose not to attend due to dissatisfaction with how TNC was addressing their multiple concerns. “There’s no point in attending these meetings if our issues remain unaddressed,” Kimaiyo stated.
While they were assured that their issues would be resolved, Kimaiyo expressed skepticism.
Kimaiyo maintained that the TNC was not doing conservation correctly, the organization didn’t mean what it said in terms of implementing the project’s initiatives, and that TNC was more focused on “nature commercialization” rather than conservation.
TNC response to the Sengwer
At least some of the misunderstanding seems to stem from Sengwer history and identity, steeped in decades of controversy over the naming of regional ethnic groups since colonial times.
According to TNC, Sengwer community members belong to a clan of the Cherangani people who also claim the Cherangany Hills Forest as their ancestral home and are involved in the EIWF project. “In February 2020, we engaged with the Cherangani Council of Elders in Kapcherop to inform them about our project as we were developing our project’s proposal,” TNC’s Kihara said. “Alongside the Ogiek community, we brought them on board for the EIWF project.”
In 2023, the Cherengani and Ogiek communities both signed their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) forms and IPAPs and were each allocated 15 million shillings to implement their projects.
But then, Kihara said, things changed. “A few months later, the Sengwer approached us, expressing that they did not want to be identified as Cherengani and requested to be included in the project as a separate entity. Although we had already allocated 30 million KES to the two other communities and were running low on funds, we honored their request. We managed to raise an additional 5 million KES. At that time, the Sengwer understood this and signed the FPIC and IPAP agreements,” Kihara said.
Regarding the seedling issue, TNC acknowledged some procurement process delays, resulting in late payments to their suppliers — including delayed payments to the Sengwer. This issue was expected to be resolved by the end of October. However, the payments had not been made by the time this story was written.
TNC noted that the organization remains focused on conservation and bringing benefits to communities, emphasizing that it stands to gain nothing from these efforts. “We don’t do conservation where communities won’t benefit,” Kihara said.
Looking ahead
Despite the challenges, two years into the project, EIWF is working on multiple levels, and it does have community support. Small-scale farmers participating in the program, such as Miriam Lagat, said they remained committed to working with EIWF. As a mixed farmer growing crops such as gooseberries, maize and chia seeds, she also plans to venture into avocado farming and hopes to receive tree seedlings through the EIWF to support this new endeavor.
Other farmers have additional hopes for the future. Dairy and commercial farmer Chelagat emphasized the need to adopt the use of biogas for cooking and for other household uses. With no nearby forest, villagers either plant trees for firewood or buy it from the market, where prices are quite high.
Her words echoed Lagat’s sentiments too. “It would be a game changer If we could get support to develop a biogas plant,” she said. “This would be a game-changer.”
Banner image: A graceful grey crested crane (Balearica regulorum) in the Eldoret-Iten watershed. Image courtesy of The Nature Conservancy.
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