The workshop this week was fabulous. My organization, Indigenous Information Network, hosted a three-day preparatory workshop on the Convention on Biological Diversity, and environmental issues in general. We had about thirty-five participants, coming from various regions of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan. Communities represented were the Batwa, Maasai, El Molo, Ogiek and a couple of others that I'm sure I'm forgetting. It was a good mix of people living in urban and rural areas, and people in traditional and "modern" African and Western dress. The workshop was held in a combination of English and Kiswahili. With my few weeks of lessons, I could still only pick up a few words here and there. There's a saying here that Kiswahili was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Tanzania, got sick in Kenya and died in Uganda. I could definitely see that at the workshop -- the Tanzanian's Kiswahili was beautiful and pristine, no English mixed in at all, unlike here.

On the first day, we had a few presentations and group discussions on the CBD, what it means and how it affects indigenous peoples. Issues like the use of traditional knowledge in environmental management and conservation, sustainable land and resource use, the creation of protected areas, and access and benefit-sharing of resources were brought up. The way that environmental management has been done in Kenya and other East African countries in the past has been extremely detrimental to the livelihoods and cultural survival of IPs. In forest management, for example, the conventional method of conservation has been to evict hunter-gatherers from the land entirely, sometimes with a resettlement program and sometimes without. Experts from elsewhere are then brought in to decide how the forest should be managed. All this despite the fact that many hunter-gatherer groups still live in close interrelation with the forest, depending on it for food, traditional medicinal plants, and cultural and spiritual matters. They have lived sustainably in the forest for generations, and yet they are being told that they don't know how to manage it. The degradation of forests occurs largely as a result of the encroachment of logging and mining companies which enter with the blessing of the government, and the settlement of people from arid lands in the forest, since drylands are becoming less and less productive as a result of unsustainable use and climate change. The use of hunter-gatherer forest management techniques would actually help curb this degradation. It is only recently that the Kenyan government has acknowledged the benefits of participatory forest management and has begun to engage local and indigenous populations in policy making and implementation. There are also now provisions for those who practice traditional plant-based medicine to collect the necessary herbs and plants, with a special permit. However, eviction, unemployment and a lack of benefit sharing are all major issues that remain unaddressed. Other countries are not as fortunate as Kenya in terms of policy formation and recognition of local resource use.

On the second day, there were presentations from government representatives. We had someone from the Kenya Wildlife Service who is also very involved in indigenous activism, someone from the Public Complaints Committee on environment, someone from Kenya Forest Service and the Public Secretary on Environment. It was a great opportunity for the participants, since one of their biggest complaints is that they are often ignored or don't know how to gain the attention of government agencies if something like illegal dumping, logging or land grabbing is going on. This gave them the opportunity to raise their issues directly and get to know who they should be dealing with on questions of environment. Some of the government officials really squirmed, especially on issues such as the degradation of the Mau forest, to which they could only reply "yes, you're right, that is an issue and we need to deal with it." It was also good for the participants to hear that government officials are limited in their capacity -- limited by mandate, time and most importantly by money. There simply aren't enough resources to address all of these problems, so the IPs were able to see that more is needed in terms of civil society, since you can't wait around for the government to fix your problems.

On the third day, we all took a bus out to Oloshoibor in Ngong, about an hour away from Nairobi, to visit the Simba Maasai Outreach project (SIMOO). I had been there a few times before, but it's always a lovely spot to visit. This group has set up a biodiversity conservation centre, where trees and plants of importance to the Maasai have been planted and labeled. They also have a small cultural museum, and a number of guest huts set up to host tourists or conferences. The spot is very dusty but beautiful, with a dam, the Ngong Hills, and hundreds of acacia trees as a backdrop.

We took a tour of SIMOO as an example of a successful biodiversity conservation project, took a look at the museum, then had lunch. Before the tour, we had watched our lunch, a white and brown goat, being slaughtered. I think this was the third goat that I've seen being killed before eating it, and it was by far the quickest, which I was grateful for. As a former vegetarian and someone who attempts to be conscious of who and what is affected by my consumption habits, I think that witnessing the slaughter is actually quite a positive experience, though a bit gruesome. If I'm going to be eating an animal, I should at least appreciate the fact that a living being has been killed in order to feed me. (A warning to the squeamish among you, a few photos of the slaughter will probably be up on flickr in the next few weeks.) The blood was collected and drunk before it congealed. I passed on that -- if you're not supposed to eat undercooked meat in developing countries, I'm pretty sure that raw blood is out too. Some of the blood did spurt onto my toes, though. At lunch, everyone had a good laugh as I got one of the legs. Unlike everyone else who relishes tearing meat off the bone, I'm terrible at getting a grip on the greasy thing, and it's really quite a production. It wasn't bad, though. The only part I really could have done without were all the little goaty stray hairs.

We got a lot of positive feedback from the workshop, and I hope that it does result in more lobbying on all levels. If we can prevent the exploitation of indigenous knowledge, lands and resources by helping raise awareness of legal rights and the international processes that IPs can participate in, the workshop will have been a success. Already I am synthesizing the recommendations from the group work into a document to be presented at an open forum on policy formation that will be held by the ministry of environment next week. Some of the participants will also be attending the Conference of Parties on the CBD in May, so hopefully they will be bringing that knowledge and energy along with them. In the meantime, I'll be writing up reports on the workshop and some of the presentations for the next issues of Nomadic News and Environmental news, which IIN publishes.

The upcoming workshop in Burundi will be on the same subject, except in French. I leave tomorrow, and it's going to be a bit of an adventure since I'm flying on my own. Lucy, my boss, has a last-minute meeting with one of our funding organizations and couldn't come along with me as planned. So I'm really hoping that I manage to get my visa, get through customs and meet who I'm supposed to be meeting (a gentleman from Unissons-Nous pour le Promotion des Batwa) on the other side. But I'm sure that it'll be fine. Actually, my greatest worry is that Lucy asked me if I could do the presentation in her place -- an introductory talk on CBD mechanisms in French. Yikes. I haven't done a presentation of any kind in years, have always hated public speaking, and my French is pretty rusty. Talk about pushing me out of my comfort zone. But I had no choice but to accept -- it has to be done on the first day, and no one else is going to step up and do it. I suppose that I can't stay in my safe little bubble of report-writing forever. Wish me luck!