Saving Water by Stewarding Together
Mara River Basin
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Mara River Basin
Hugo Wood
Mara River Water Users Association, Founder
Alison M. Jones
NWNL Director and Photographer
Alison M. Fast
Videographer
Having first interviewed Hugo Wood’s son and daughter-in-law Tarquin and Lippa Wood, it was great to hear Hugo’s thoughts and priorities for protecting the Mara River’s water quality and availability. Both father and son are in the Mara River Water Users Association/MRWUA and not surprisingly share the same visions for creating a more productive and protective use of land in their region for large- and small-scale farmers, as well as local pastoralists, such as the Maasai cattle owners.
Their support for and involvement with MRWUA is a great example of inclusive problem-solving. NWNL has also seen the successful, NRWUA group for the Njoro River in the Mau Forest, above Lake Nakuru. Kenya’s Water User Associations offer awareness, and consequences of ignoring healthy watersheds. Hugo has particularly focused on the need to recreate the water-retentive sponge effect of forests, especially in greater drought occurrences.
See also our Mara River Basin interview in the same week with Hugo’s son and daughter-in-law Tarquin and Lippa Wood on Commercial Farmers Conserving Water.
VALUES & SERVICES of the MARA RIVER
UPSTREAM-DOWNSTREAM IMPACTS
SEEKING COORDINATION & PARTNERS
MANAGEMENT OBJECTIVES
CHANGE in the LAST 5 YEARS
SOLUTIONS for INCREASING FARMS
MARA RIVER BASIN SUMMARY: Forest to Lake
All images © Alison M. Jones, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
NWNL Hugo, it’s nice to meet you after our meeting with Tarquin and Lippa, your son and his wife. We discussed the value and the services of the Mara River; why it is an important river; and assessed its worth.
HUGO WOOD Oh, the value of the Mara River is that it’s a water supply to thousands of people who are either small-scale maize growers or have livestock. There are many other uses for the Mara River’s water. It travels down from the Mau Forest and highlands in the Upper Mara River Basin all the way down to the Kenya- Tanzania border and into Tanzania.
The whole way down, people live alongside of it. Of course, it’s also very valuable to world-famous wildlife in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. If the Reserve’s reach of the Mara River starts to dry up, it will have a big impact since the Maasai Mara National Reserve is a very big foreign-exchange money-earner for Kenya. Saving the upper reaches of the Mara is now a political issue that is coming to a head. The Mara River comes from the Mau Forest – which, although it’s large, is being cut down and made into small farms.
Politicians are now trying to control this crisis and gain back forested land that has already been lost.
NWNL How do you define upstream-downstream effects on the overall health of the Mara River? Is there constructive coordination between stakeholders and stewards? And that gets to my query as to what led you to establish the Mara River Water Users Association?
HUGO WOOD We started the Mara River Water Users Association [MRWUA, hereafter] because we feel the river is threatened. The biggest threat is in the forest at the river’s headwaters, where trees are being cut down; but there are also other threats. People are cultivating crops on very steep slopes with no trees, so when it rains, their farms are washed down into the river. So, water quality is a problem. The Mara River is very full of silt, especially during the rains. So that must be addressed.
There are also many tributaries into the Mara with people living on them and springs along the sides. They must be protected, with a sort of “code of conduct” for all the water in the Mara River Basin. It’s not just the Mara River’s main stem, but also the many other water sources flowing into the Mara. We need them all properly managed and protected.
We who are involved with MRWUA felt good management was not possible to enact by legislation alone. We need stakeholders who benefit from the river to become an effective voice supporting policy issues that come up. By and large, MRWUA has worked.
We work with the government’s Water Resources Management Authority on legislation. They often come to our meetings and interact. We know them well. They license everybody taking water out along the river and inspect effluent going into the river. They form policy and enforce management rules so the river runs as sustainably in next 50 years as it does today.
NWNL How long ago did you start MRWUA? Do you have partners you work with, such as Enonkisha Conservancy or other conservancies? When did you start? Who are your partners? What are your goals?
HUGO WOOD The MRWUA works with NGOs and other organizations that help us with funding and ideas. They come to our meetings. The most useful one is World Wildlife Fund, WWF, who put money into MRWUA, plus time and energy into managing MRWUA and the river. They gave us motorbikes and helped pay wages for people working with MRWUA.
WWF bought us the piece of land which I’ll show you. It’s about 4 acres of land along the Mara River, which we hope to develop into an awareness sort of place. It will have electrical signs and a few banners around where you can stay. We will try to develop that into a training center focused on the Mara River. That WWF has been in the forefront helping us.
We also work well with Water Management Resources Authority, the governmental wing. They come down often with advice on our options. Florida University’s GLOW project with Amanda Sublusky have helped us a great deal.
One problem we’ve had involves the lodges and the camps down in the Mara. We’ve got a place on the MRWUA Board for them, but we haven’t managed to get any of them to come forward and give us their opinion on how the Greater Mara wildlife should be managed.
The small-scale farmer is by far the biggest membership we’ve got, and we have a few of us who are large-scale farmers – but we are there. Yet, we’ve not managed to get the wildlife side involved.
NWNL Why do you think that is?
HUGO WOOD I think partly it’s our fault. We haven’t really advertised ourselves. We haven’t pushed it forward. Also, as long as they see the river passing along in front of them, I think they don’t want to get involved. This is a political hot potato with the forest up their backs, so they don’t want to seem to be rocking any boats. So, for now, we feel we have failed.
We’ve had several events in the lodges to explain MRWUA to them; and asked their opinions. But nobody has come forward to say, “I will represent the wildlife side and come to your meetings on a regular basis.” If they did that, they could then relay information back with their associates and so on. I think they are motivated, so if we could get them involved, they’d be a big force.
There are 140 or so camps and lodges in the Mara now. It would be good if we could get them on board. We need to make more of an effort.
NWNL How do you summarize MRWUA goals and objectives?
HUGO WOOD MRWUS aims to manage the river in a sustainable way and serve as the stakeholders’ voice. We can’t wrestle the management off the government’s Water Resources Management Authority, but we’d like to be much more involved in policy decisions and enforcing future rules and restrictions.
The most important problem we face is keeping the river flowing. The other is to maintain healthy water quality. Those goals will take management. More and more people live on the river now – there are some big towns on it. One big town right on the river has no sewage system at all. Just down the road, Mulot is another big town with no sewage system.
So, we are looking for development funds to get proper sewage systems into those towns to stop their pollution of the river. For that, we’re going to need more partners and more funding.
NWNL What are your management challenges?
HUGO WOOD The river needs certain rules. A code of conduct must be drawn up on how much water a small-scale farmer on the side of the river can take out. What fees should be go towards the management?
We as large-scale farmers pay a set amount for every liter we take out. We have meters on our pumps that are monitored. They come and charge us for each liter we take out. We feel that small-scale farmers should not be charged a massive amount, but they should be made aware that some money needs to be collected so have officers can know how much water is coming out of the river; how many riverside acres are being irrigated; numbers of livestock drinking water out of the river daily.
This monitoring requires people going up and down the river. It would be very helpful to have the river surveyed every year on the river. Plus, if a new farmer comes in and wants to use water from the Mara River, he should have to apply through the Water Resources Authority to do that.
NWNL What is the comparison you see when you fly over the river? How many pumps were there last week versus 1 year ago or 5 years ago?
HUGO WOOD Pumps on the river, for the small-scale maize and cabbage farmers along the riverbank have increased enormously over the last 5 years. It’s another income besides livestock. They have a market for their produce. It’s human nature to increase your livelihood if you can – so they do, and they will continue to do so over the next 5 years.
We’re not particularly trying to stop them; we just want to monitor them to learn how much water they’re taking out. Then, if we have very dry months we could consider reducing the number of hours they can use it.
There are only 3 large-scale farmers using water out from the river. They are much easier to monitor because they can close their pumps, but we perhaps they could warn us when the river reaches certain levels. Then we could say, “No more planting.” Or maybe we’d need to say, “We must pause taking any water out.”
Without a warning, we lose the crops we’ve got in. These options are all part of management. That’s what the River Water Users Associations want to be involved in.
NWNL Who withdraws more water from the river – the 3 large-scale commercial farmers or the combination of small-scale farmers?
HUGO WOOD I don’t know; but that’s the sort of thing we should be able to answer. We should have our officers out there learning who’s drawing water, and for how many hours. Then I’d be able to give you an answer to that question. As a blind guess, I think large-scale farmers pull out 2/3 of withdrawals. But that could change with the growth in today’s small-scale market. If cabbages are fetching a better price, we’ll get more small-scale farmers taking water out.
NWNL What solutions do you see looming on the horizon, or being put in place now? Perhaps creating conservancies; or creating lifestyles that combine both livestock and wildlife; or using biogas which your son Tarquin talked about, or education…. What do you see as the biggest contributors to solving issues of water availability?
HUGO WOOD The biggest problem which needs a solution is the Mau Forest – the source of the Mara River. Laying that aside, there are other problems further downriver of people cutting trees down and causing riverbank erosion and such. For instance, there are too many cattle on the riverbanks, causing soil to erode downriver. Many of these cattle tracks into the river are 2 or 3 kilometers long, and they become massive erosion ditches. These are issues the whole way down the river; but all can be managed if we keep monitoring and talking with the stakeholders.
The quality of the water has been assessed chemically as being not dangerous at all. There’s nothing wrong with the water itself – the problem is the high E coli count. Yet people drink from the whole length of the river. There are many springs everywhere along these hills that could be renovated and then be protected. We could use the springs for drinking water and so on. The water quality from the springs is much safer than the river itself.
So, proper filtration is what we need for those who use the river water, which people do. Boiling the water is obviously an easy solution, and there are big concrete sand filters now made by Tenwek Hospital that are brilliant. One puts river water in the top, and it comes out clear at the bottom.
So, we can improve quality of water in local households. That can be done. Downstream, once you get beyond the farming area into the game area, the conservancies there are trying to control the numbers of cattle and increase the quality of cattle. They can reduce the numbers of cattle with better cattle: since they’ll get higher prices, they can raise fewer cattle- thus reducing grazing in the Mara Basin. But today there are so many cattle that they run out of grass. If we reduce their numbers, and increase their quality, that could lessen the pain of these droughts that come through every now and then.
NWNL At lunch you said, “I think we’ll have a drought every year.” Is that due to climate change; or is it the loss of trees in the Mau Forest; or is it a combination of both? And do you truly think the droughts will come through every year?
HUGO WOOD Certainly the droughts are now frequent. We’ve kept records for the 30 years we’ve been here.. The first 10 years, we averaged about 1,000 millimeters per year. For the last ten years, it’s been 850 mm a year.
So, this has become a drier area than it used to be. I think 1 in 5 years we get a serious drought like now. What they do as a result is they build up the numbers of cattle. Then they hit a drought; lose another third or quarter of that number; and build them up again.
This is not an efficient way to do livestock. It would be much easier to withstand a drought without that approach. The cattle come from miles to look for grass. Even in the middle of Nairobi, there are cattle looking for grass.. They have appropriate numbers, so during a drought, they don’t have to panic and look for grass. Half of them die.
A herd should be able to be maintained through a drought, especially because the droughts are now more frequent, even if they are not as severe as this year’s drought. We’ll get little droughts – two or three months without rain – and our pastoralists should be able to deal with that.
HUGO WOOD The biggest problem the Mara River faces now is the Mau Forest is being cut down at its source. Politicians are doing their best to address this from various directions. If we get a healthy Mau Forest back, the river then will have a more regular flow. But now with a damaged forest, it goes up and down rapidly in a matter of days.
Further down the river, cattle numbers in Maasai land are growing, out of control, as if it were a competition to see who can get the most cattle possible. Now that the Maasai have new incomes from tourism and our large-scale farms, they don’t have to sell cattle to send their children to school, buy clothes or pay for other needs. The more farmland that goes to farming, the less grazing there is for their cattle; so we’re seeing a snowball effect. It gets worse every year, and now this area looks like a desert due to the cattle.
Adjudication of land ownership began about ten years ago, so now many people own their own land – but, again, with many, many more cattle than their portion of land can hold. So, they graze on other people’s land up in the hills.
NWNL Is the MRWUA involved in addressing these issues?
HUGO WOOD MRWUA has several places on the board for different stakeholders from both large-scale to small-scale farmers to Maasai pastoralists with their cattle. We want to work with these people to solve the cattle problem while keeping as income for them, as it is a very deep part of their culture.
NWNL It seems MRWUA is really trying to bring everybody together.
HUGO WOOD Our MRWUA group includes all stakeholders because we can’t solve these problems without the support of all. We need their support to push through some of the solutions we envisage. We will change some of these solutions due to pressure we’ll get from t stakeholders, but we need them there to help solve the problems of the Mara River.
NWNL Best of luck; and thank you, Hugo, for your time. Here’s to a healthy Mau Forest, full of newly-planted trees!
Posted by NWNL on July 8, 2024.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.
All images © Alison M. Jones, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.