Transition Branching Out? Land Reform: Losing and Recovering the Commons
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By Justin Kenrick
The Transition to Unsustainability:
The morning mist obscures the mountain, and smoke rises through the thatched roofs of the round or oblong earth and wood walled huts, as people, goats, sheep and cows wake . .
Cows munch on the nearby grass, their bells tinkling, goats call from their little huts on stilts where they have slept overnight, pooing and peeing through the slatted wooden floor, and sheep emerge from the room they have slept in at the end of the oblong houses. There are two other rooms in the oblong homes: one for the family, and the other a large room that acts as kitchen and living room with its firepit in the middle of the earth-floor. There were ten of us sleeping on that floor after talking, music and laughter late into the night.
This is one of the villages where the Ogiek live in their ancestral homeland of Chepkitale on the slopes of Mt Elgon, Kenya. We are here to assess whether their ways of living are compatible with conservation’s stated aim of conserving the high moorland they live in, and conserving the forests on the lower slopes that they use for their cattle in the dry season, and for honey and for gathering fallen wood. I am working for a human rights NGO that the Ogiek have asked to help stop them from being evicted. We have brought a team of conservationists, of local councillors and Western NGOs to evaluate their way of living. It quickly becomes clear that they are living in a way that is a million times more sustainable than any of us who are evaluating them. Their knowledge of medicinal herbs is profound, their answers to sceptical conservationists shows a depth of understanding of their environment born out of generations of ensuring that the forest and wildlife and livestock are all kept in balance since this is the source of their well-being. In such a system, it is very clear that there is no contradiction between self-interest and inter-species altruism.
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Link: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2011/12/13/transition-branching-out-land-reform-losing-and-recovering-the-commons/#more-4779
