Key messages
- The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) undertook a review of Kenya's legal framework to understand whether, and to what extent, Kenyan legal provisions were sufficient to secure community land and forest rights. The primary objective was to assess how adequate Kenya's legal framework was in protecting and promoting tenure rights of forest communities, including in protected areas.
- The law appears to offer adequate security for the tenure rights of forest communities. Kenya's Community Land Act, enacted in 2016, defines community tenure rights comprehensively and has legal provisions to enhance and guarantee tenure security. Forests on communal land are secure, at least on paper.
- Areas of public gazetted forests that are claimed by indigenous groups as their customary territory are not well secured by law, even though the Constitution recognizes indigenous groups. However, a task force is now addressing this gap.
- Most challenges lie in determining community identity and customary land rights, and registration of the community and land rights. This affects areas claimed as ancestral lands by indigenous and marginalized communities. Resolution requires investigations into historical land injustices to provide remedies.
- Key actions to strengthen protection and promotion of forest communities' tenure rights are: participatory mapping and inventory of community land requiring determination of customary rights and registration; implementation of legal mechanisms for community participation in public forest management; and a system to map out community forests which fall under a) land lawfully held, managed or used by as community forests, grazing areas or shrines or ancestral lands; and b) lands traditionally occupied by hunter-gatherer communities.
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- Securing Tenure Rights for Forest-Dependent Communities: a global comparative study of design and implementation of tenure reform
- Securing Tenure Rights for Forest Landscape-Dependent Communities: Linking science with policy to advance tenure security, sustainable forest management and people’s livelihoods
- International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Publisher
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Publication year
2020
Authors
Geographic
Kenya
Topic
Research was conducted by project
Funded by
Geographic
Kenya
Project Leader
Anne Larson
Team Leader, Equal Opportunities, Gender Justice & Tenure