Sarah Chamblis of Princeton university spent ten days with me on an ecology and conservation field course through The Great Rift Valley. apart from mothering a rescued baby ostrich, she also wrote a couple of guest blog posts for us.
Enjoy and please encourage her with your comments.
Paula.
Lake Bogoria and Conservation Challenges
Our first day out, Paula Kuhumbu introduced us to William Kimosop, the senior warden of Lake Bogoria National Reserve. William is somewhat of a visionary of community-driven conservation, and he has worked for over twenty years to help those living in the areas around Lake Bogoria to understand the long-term value of their natural resources. He encourages them to harvest resources like firewood and lake salt at low, sustainable levels by assuring them that the real profits from these items will come from the tourism they bring.
To deliver on this promise, William is trying hard to attract more visitors to the area. To this end, he has planned and organized the construction of a tourist information center located along the highway, just a few meters from the equator. We visited the site to see the progress they’ve made, and at this stage it looks good. The main information office itself is a round, two-story cement building, and the site also includes a classroom and an outdoor platform with a 10-foot statue of a globe ringed prominently by the equator. It is all appealing and modern-looking, and has real potential to attract visitors. It still needs some polishing touches, though– for example, it doesn’t yet have power. But, as William noted with a laugh as we walked away from the building, he would have to harass his boss for funding. The project, it seems, is running short on money.
This does not spell doom for the development of the center, however: William has a plan. He will try contacting multinational energy-producing companies and asking if they would like to be the tourism center’s corporate sponsor. In return for providing the building with solar panels, they would receive an advertising space near the tourist center main building.
In some respects, seeking sponsorship from large corporations is a nice solution. It seems like a win for the energy companies; in the US, at least, I have seen many attempts by big oil to work the “we’re pushing for alternative energy strategies” angle. Being able to claim sponsorship of clean energy for eco-tourism in a developing country, all for the cost of a few solar panels and some posters– how could they pass up that opportunity? And for community members, in order to move from subsistence farming to a profitable tourism-based business, they need capital. Micro-finance organizations have been stepping up to provide that capital, but for some projects it might be easier to look to corporate donations. If a company is willing to give materials in return for only public recognition, why bother with applying for a loan to buy those materials, especially since you would then need to worry about repaying the loan?
However, there are definitely some drawbacks I can see. For one, part of the tourist appeal of Kenya is the idea that it is a natural setting that resists the advertising and corporate branding so prevalent in industrialized countries. Smacking a multinational corporate logo on a tourist center might greatly decrease its appeal. This idea falls flat when you see how many shops and roadside stands are already plastered with Coca Cola branding; Kenya is far from untouched by ads. Buildings painted in garish colors like the bright pink of Zain or the lime green of Safaricom are already everywhere. Suggesting that Kenyan tourism should avoid selling out may be a blind denial of the forces of globalization.
Safaricom store
The second danger I see is the possibility that a sponsor corporation will take far more from recipient organizations than they expect. If companies agree to provide solar panels but ask for more than just a corner of the tourism office, what is William Kimosop to do? He is not naive, but he can’t afford to hire a team of lawyers to negotiate on behalf of the community conservation effort. Lake Bogoria has lost out to corporations before, although in that case it was due to confusion between KWS and the National Council for Science and Technology, and had little to do with the local council that is in charge of managing Lake Bogoria National Reserve.
But if the visitor’s center never gets off the ground and the communities don’t profit from tourism the way they were expecting, conservation in the area might be in real trouble. I do hope that the tourist center gets its sponsor, but I really hope that they get a fair deal.
Sarah with the Baby Ostrich
