ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ANALYSIS

Abstract

A major barrier to socio-economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya, is food inadequacy. Some of the more important factors that have led to this status are rapid population growth outstripping food production capacity, post-harvest losses, land degradation that leads to further decline in soil fertility, and climatic changes, particularly periodic droughts and subsequent flooding. This food shortages coupled with high poverty rates that diminish people’s ability to afford the ever increasing food prices, has led to related health problems especially in rural areas. In the effort to meet the required food supplies to feed the growing population, forest lands have been cleared for small scale agriculture. Inevitably, a major challenge to economic developing in Kenya is, therefore, the sustained increase of food production without compromising the integrity of the environment within which that much required food is produced. As such the project seeks to complement other projects that seek to “improve the productivity and sustainability of land use systems in Nzoia, Yala and Nyando river basins through adoption of an integrated ecosystem management approach” through development of on-farm and off-farm conservation practices and increased local capacity (Global Environmental Facility, 2004:3). Desired outcomes include increased biodiversity and reduced erosion (GEF, 2004).