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Mount Kenya is a vital source of water for the area’s agriculture, fisheries and livestock production and is strategic to the country’s economic development. But environmental degradation and changes in climate are threatening the mountain that is the country’s ‘largest water tower’. Protecting the environment has become a priority for the government and for local communities. An IFAD-funded project is supporting their efforts to restore vegetation cover, conserve water catchments and sources, and improve farming practices.

Mount Kenya was listed as a world heritage site in 1998. It is the second highest mountain in Africa and its massive forest cover provides home to a wide range of animal and plant species. The vast underground lakes and a large network of rivers that originate from the mountain supply water to more than two million people in surrounding rural areas as well as to the approximately three million inhabitants of the nation’s capital Nairobi. It also provides close to half the flow of water into the Tana River, which produces 50 per cent of the hydropower generated in Kenya.  

But water mismanagement and deforestation are rapidly destroying water catchment areas all over the country, and water scarcity is reaching worrying levels. Only 30 to 40 per cent of Kenyans have access to potable water, and water quality is a growing concern.

Grassroots action tackles the problem

Communities are responding by forming water users’ associations along the main rivers flowing from the mountain. With the support of the government and IFAD, members of the associations plant trees and vegetative ground cover to protect riverbeds and natural springs, and monitor the pollution levels of the rivers. The members are also working to obtain legal status for the associations, which will give them rights to manage and sell water for their communities.

“Given the importance of Mount Kenya for the region’s water supply, something had to be done,” says Robson Mutandi, IFAD’s country programme manager for Kenya. “We need to ensure sustainable protection of the environment and a continued supply of water to the people, while making sure that people living around the mountain have sustainable livelihoods.”

Working in partnership with the Kenyan government and the Global Environment Facility, IFAD funds the Mount Kenya East Pilot Project for Natural Resource Management. The project combines environmental conservation with improved farming practices and income-generating activities, with the aim of improving the lives of Mount Kenya’s poorest people. The project started in 2004, for a duration of eight years.

Cleaning up rivers a priority

Poor people in Mount Kenya’s rural areas are equally concerned about water supply and quality, and many of them have decided to act.

“Our rivers are so bad,” says Margaret Muthanje Simbah, secretary of the Ena River Water Users’ Association, a group formed by the project to protect one of the rivers flowing from Mount Kenya. “They are so spoiled. The water we fetch is dirty and contaminated. We need the water to be clean for ourselves and for our children, so we decided to act. We formed the water users’ association to clean up and preserve our water resources.”

Without proper vegetative ground cover to protect the soil and prevent water from evaporating, springs progressively dry up and water sources that were once abundant and clean can no longer be used. Washed-out sediments, agrochemical pollution and trash contaminate water sources across the country.

Easing the burden for women and children

In drier areas, women and children usually have to walk long distances to fetch water for cooking, washing and drinking, and finding adequate water for irrigation is a widespread problem. Typically, women and children as young as five years old have to walk between one and six kilometres for water bearing 20-litre containers on their heads. By protecting springs and building earth dams to collect flood flow, the project helps rural communities bring water closer to their homes and reduce the burden of carrying water for such long distances. This also allows communities to revive or build new irrigation schemes, which in turn helps improve household food security.

“During the dry season, the water from our spring would drip so slowly that we would have to line up and even sleep at the spring just to get some water,” explains Lucy Njoki, chairperson of the Rumbia Women’s Group. When the project came to her village, in Mbeere district, the first thing the group asked for was support to rehabilitate the spring. The women even manually built one kilometre of road so that vehicles with construction material could reach the spring and start work. Now water flows from a tap and the queues are gone. Hygiene has also improved as a result.

In some communities, environmental protection of water sources began even before the project started in 2005.

Jane Mary Wambeti Joe is a participant in the Kirurumwe Valley River Rehabilitation Programme, which was set up by the local water users’ association. She started her own tree nursery some years ago as a source of income and to provide seedlings to plant along the river banks. The demand for tree seedlings is so high that she is now able to earn enough to cover her two children’s secondary school fees.

“The trees are important in preventing soil erosion,” she says. “We also need them in order to get rain.”

Strong water users’ associations key to sustainability

A river water users’ association was formed in each of the five pilot river basins in the project area. Each association is in charge of the overall protection of the basin, while community-based common interest groups coordinate all of the associated activities through local project management committees. Activities include rehabilitating and conserving springs, rehabilitating irrigation schemes and constructing new ones, and constructing earth dams.

Members of the water users’ associations are elected by village groups that represent each community in the river basin.

“These associations need to be strengthened and become legal entities to be able to enforce the regulations related to good management practices and to punish offenders,” says Richard  Mbogo, water resources specialist for the project. With legal status, associations will be able to assist regional water resource management and supply authorities to manage and commercially supply water to their communities.

Long-term sustainability is one of the reasons why water users’ associations and project management committees are encouraged to sell water – although at a very low price – rather than give it away in the water kiosks that they manage. Fees cover the costs of infrastructure repairs and chemicals for water analysis and treatment. Buying water was once an unpopular idea, but communities are quickly realizing the benefit of paying for clean and accessible water.

“In the long run, the aim is to have institutions at the community level that are fully aware of their responsibility to manage their resources in a sustainable manner,” says Mutandi. “They also need to be able to generate enough income to sustain themselves and to feed back into protecting the environment.”