Ensuring Sustainable Management of Kirisia Forest, Samburu, Kenya

In the Samburu Heartland, AWF has been working with various community group ranch owners to enhance forest governance of the ecologically important Kirisia forest.

Until recently the future of the forest was threatened as increasing poverty and lack of support for community governance caused many to resort to unsustainable utilization practices such as commercial charcoal production. One solution was to establish a Community Forest Association (CFA) as a platform to promote effective citizen engagement in local forest governance and to provide a vehicle to mitigate resource-based conflict.

AWF helped ensure that Kirisia CFA (KCFA), a non-state actor, was endowed with the mechanisms and capacity needed to ensure effective citizen participation in the governance of the local forest. This was done by building its technical, institutional, and networking capacity as well as establishing a management plan for the forest and introducing a conflict resolution mechanism.