The East African Wildlife Society and the Kenya Forest Working Group, has called for the integration of Kenyan Forests standards along the Forest value chains to ensure sustainable productions and consumption of forest and forest resources in an open letter to the President of the republic of Kenya. The realization of this would definitely put the country on the global spectrum and help Kenya attain SDG 12 that calls for sustainable consumption and production patterns.
What you need to Know about the Forest Conservation and Management Act (2016)
The Bill allows variations to forest boundaries as long as the changes do not endanger any rare, threatened or endangered species or adversely affect a forest’s value as a water catchment area or prejudice biodiversity conservation.
According to the Act, the variation of public forest boundaries can only be considered by the National Assembly upon technical recommendations from the Kenya Forest Service (KFS).
The Forest Conservation and Management (Amendment) Bill 2021 proposes that the clause that gives KFS the mandate to recommend changes to the forest border delineation be repealed. Instead, the Amendment Bill proposes the insertion of a provision that vests the power to review petitions on forest boundary changes on either the clerk of the National Assembly or a committee of the House.
The open letter to the president as published.
We are grateful to the members and readers who signed up to defeat this amendment, and to bring some logic and legality to this law. People are skeptical of the KFS capacity sometimes, but we don’t want our forests (let alone our other natural resources) left solely in the hands of politicians.
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