Post: State to develop natural resource conservation policy

Ministries overseeing the management of various natural resources across the country have come together to review policies in the wildlife sector with the intention of developing a single integrated ecosystem-based natural resource conservation policy, to promote sustainable utilisation.The Policy will also promote wildlife conservation and sustainable use of natural resources and encourage conservation of wildlife and biodiversity.Principal Secretary (PS) State Department for Wildlife, Ms. Silvia Museiya, says conflicting government policies and laws on natural resources administered by different State Departments have been the cause of environmental degradation associated with the constant decline in wildlife species and biodiversity, adding that it was important to come up with a broad-based policy that safeguards natural resources across the board.Speaking today at the Serena Hotel during a meeting that brought together natural resource stakeholders and principal secretaries from the State Departme nts for Agriculture, Water and Irrigation, Mining, Blue Economy, Environment, Energy, and Lands, Ms. Museiya said the respective State Departments have agreed on the need for urgent efforts to develop a single integrated ecosystem-based natural resource conservation policy to stop the worrying decline of wildlife species and biodiversity, environmental pollution, and to promote conservation.The Principal Secretary noted that the natural resource sector, covering wildlife, agriculture, energy and mining, water resources, the environment, and livestock, had discordant laws and policies that hampered government ministries from working together to promote wildlife conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.Ms. Museiya noted that land is the foundation of conservation, yet different government Ministries had varying laws and regulations that precipitated conflicts and fights among government Department in the process of utilisation.She said the envisaged Integrated Ecosystem-Based Natural Resource Conservation Policy, aims to guide natural resource utilisation and resolve conflicts in the sector.Stakeholder engagements, she noted, have been initiated to come-up with a framework to harmonise the conflicting policies so as to strengthen governance in the natural resource sector and promote community resilience.Ms. Museiya cited licensing of land use for mining, agriculture, and energy generation that leads to degradation and loss of wildlife habitat, while licensing of fishing and exploitation of forestry resources violates policies and laws that promote wildlife protected areas, respectively, as some of the major challenges experienced in the sector.She said that there was need to determine and quantify the value of the country's wildlife and natural resources to gain recognition as a factor in economic production and attract adequate resource allocation to facilitate conservation.The Principal Secretary noted that although there was a lot of data on natural resources hosted by various governmen t research departments, the data had neither been simplified nor made available to policymakers.Source : Kenya News Agency