A review conducted by the forestry management team, titled “Forest Resource Management and Logging Activities in Kenya” has found that only 17 out of the 47 counties have signed the Transition Implementation Plans (TIPs) to facilitate the transfer of functions related to management of community and private forests. The finding further reveals that counties that have signed the plans have not yet implemented them, due to the absence human capacity.
Should management of forestry be devolved to the county level or should central government hold on to management of certain responsibilities until the regions have built capacity. We might end up with many regions completely deforested as there is no one in charge. Building capacity is about retraining and employment – these are jobs for the local communities
Many functions devolved to counties, are beyond their ability to manage, it will take many years to gain the capacity, by which time devolution will have failed catastrophically is many regions.
We already have a disciplined service for this role. Kenya Forest Service (KFS). Forest don’t know human boundaries so let them be administered from one point covering all forests. Now let’s look at KFS to see where they excel and where they fail. Is it a human issue or a policy issue. Are they well funded or equipped. The answer are, the policies on paper are OK, KFS is undermanned, they don’t have new equipments. In the last 5 years they only reforms they got was health insurance and personal insurance cover of 10 million if they pass on duty which was part of all NPS and Prisons staff new package. They are inline for housing with Police and prison service this term. So there something being done but a lot still pending. Capital intensive forest fencing is needed, base camps, look outs etc are needed. County governments can form forest management committees to join up with the various county administration offices to supervise what KFS does within their areas.
Perhaps secondment personnel from the National Youth Service can assist forestry achieve certain goals. Later convert those roles into full time posts which NYS staff can apply to move into; there is probably greater discipline from NYS than Forestry.