Global Response Enjoins Local Politics to Threaten $35M American Investment in Obama’s Homeland

Local politics and pure malice can be enough to kill a noble project, but to have quite a respectable environmental action network like the Boulder, Colorado-based Global Response get enjoined in endless intrigues, extortion and tomfoolery that are threatening a $35 million organic farming project in Kenya is quite a story.

Expert findings, personal research and a discreet fact-finding visit to the Dominion Farms project in Siaya, a rural agricultural district, also homeland of Democratic presidential contender, Barack Obama’s father, is all it took to conclude that the letter-writing group partly funded by the New Earth Foundation may have made the goof of the decade.

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This may be a classic case of ecocolonialism, one of many of foreign NGOs’ attempts to meddle in economic development in the third world as seen in wildlife management poilitics, which is a bit unfair. A Columbia Earthscape documented case in point was the antagonism between the villagers in Samoa and a foreign conservation organization that captured the attention of international media years ago.

If the project was somewhere in the US, it would not have raised a feather. Why is it that Americans have been able to exploit their resources to build an economy in ecologically sustainable ways without much ado?

The story goes that Dominion Group, a venture fronted by Calvin Burgess, a businessman from Guthrie, Oklahoma, saw an opportunity to reclaim part of a 17,000 acre swamp and in the year 2003, Dominion Farms (its affiliate) secured approval from the local authorities to lease 30% of the contiguous lowlands in the Nyanza Province of western Kenya for a term of 45 years to develop an irrigation rice project and related crops.

Before then, 85 per cent of the local population of Siaya and Bondo districts were living below the poverty level. Infrastructure was very poor with no proper roads, handicapping any small commercial enterprises and the poor drinking water supply. Due to the desperate poverty in the area, there existed a chronic sense of insecurity which in turn led to suspicion and poor relations between communities. Now the population living below the poverty line has dropped to under 65%.

Burgess estimates his firm has spent $5 million a year since 2001 building dikes and hydroelectric dams, creating roads where none existed and establishing what he hopes will be a new start for thousands of the country’s poorest residents.

However, he has recently scaled back the project due to blatant interference from local politicians who demand bribes for “protection”, incitement of local communities by a myriad of environmental activists and a host of sabotage activities around the project.

Despite support from the Kenya government, which ministry of regional development and the national environmental management authority, have okayed the project, and from church leaders, he still feels the project is generating too much heat.

There exists tons of reports that conflict on the ecological viability of the project with so called environmental and community experts disagreeing on certain issues.

Global Response did not check its facts right before embarking on a massive letter writing campaign on the plate of environmental protection and human rights that, fortunately, has failed to make sense of this debacle.

The truth is, while the swamp provides critical habitat for many endangered fish, bird and mammal species, its abundant resources have also provided food security and livelihood for thousands of families over many generations.

Dominion Farms has ensured community involvement by way of out-grower contracting and the support of schools, clinics and emerging community initiatives. Burgess has demonstrated use of sustainbale technologies to this agricultural community where 95% of all cropland is dependent on rain-fed production. Farmers are under-invested in agricultural technologies and equipment.

Elaborate environmental sustainability measures are in place, and approved by independent environmental experts. Assertions that Dominion Farms has not taken these into consideration are all but lies. There exists a valid environmental impact assessment report by NEMA, a government agency, as well as a ecological license by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service.

I am not an apologist for any American who wants to invest in Africa but this highlights what goes on in projects in the developing world, such as the Dominion Farms in Kenya. This is why Global Response should rewrite their script to justify their relevance to the third world.

For to claim that the clearing of swamp papyrus will have negative side economic effects on locals since they have always used these plants to make mats and stand in the way of an ecologically and economically sustainable project with enormous benefits to a whole community is but preposterous.

Image Credit: WRI Staff at Flickr under Creative Commons

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