This archive report was first published on 1 September 2019.
On September 1, 2019, a Kenyan Environment and Land Court judge granted an urgent interdict to protect the Malka Mari national park from Cabinet Ministers who allowed community settlement and illegal development structures.
The interdict was granted by Judge Enock Chirchir Cherono in response to an application by petitioners Ibrahim Ibrahim and Abdi Yakub, who sought to protect the park from the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Ministers of Wildlife and Tourism, and of Internal Security and Coordination, and the Mandera County Government.
The Malka Mari national park, located on the Mandera plateau in the extreme north east of Kenya, was declared in 1989 to protect the high concentration of wildlife and endemic plants in the area. The park runs along the Daua River, which forms part of the boundary between Kenya and Ethiopia, and is close to the border with Somalia.
The applicants alleged that the two Ministers had neglected and failed to manage or protect the park's ecosystem, allowing community settlement and posing serious environmental threats to the already fragile ecosystem. They accused the Ministers of allowing the communities to settle in the park without conducting any environmental impact assessment or inviting public participation.
The Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security and Administration had built an administration police post, a police station, and a 'chief camp', among other structures, all 'without carrying out an environmental impact assessment' or inviting public participation. The other Cabinet Secretary failed to act in a way that would conserve the park, and had gone 'even further', said the applicants, 'and built schools, dispensaries and (constructed) roads within the park'. Mandera's County Government had presented a budget for the 2018/9 year, in which funds were allocated to finance 'illegal and unlawful construction of infrastructure within the park without following the law'.
The legal officer for the Kenya Wildlife Service, Doreen Mutunga, did not 'come out clearly' in her replying affidavit to say whether 'she supports or opposes the application', said the judge. Instead, she complained that the two applicants had set about things the wrong way, and that disputes like this should be resolved using the 'elaborate dispute settlement procedure' under the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act.
Neither of the Ministers made any response, but the county government also argued that the dispute should have been dealt with by local government dispute resolution structures.
Cherono said he had been asked to bar the Ministers and others from awarding tenders for construction or development of any infrastructure, and to stop the allocation of plots to informal settlers in the national park.
