Consideraciones funcionales para cirugía

The opposition of the Loita majority to Narok County Council’s plan can be seen as an ‘environmental movement’, defined as a political ramification of environmental change in the sense of a reaction by a socially disadvantaged group to the disproportionate so- cio-economic costs of environmental change that emerged as a result of, for example, commercial tree plantations or hydro-electric dams (Bryant 1992: 24-27). Such an un- derstanding of the Narok County Council conflict would hinge on Loita concerns about the environmental state of the forest. This explanation, however, does not hold if one takes the second round of the conflict into consideration. In this second instance, oppo- sition was directed at IUCN, an environmental organization whose main interest was the environmental status of the forest. Though tempting at first sight, opposition to Narok County Council’s plan cannot be convincingly described as an environmental move- ment.

Development and Welfare Association’, ‘Middle Ground Group’ and ‘Osupuko Oirobi Development Group’. I have never heard of these groups and their proliferation might have more to do with the authors’ (and IUCN’s) attempts at being inclusive and mapping all forest management stakeholder groups. During the IUCN conflict, yet another group emerged in press notices called the ‘Forest Morans’, but people interviewed in Loita had never heard of them (‘The Maasai stand up’:

www.ogiek.org/indepth/break-one-killed.htm accessed 24/2/14; ‘Loita and Purko Maasai resist

IUCN’: www.culturalsurvival.org/news/michael-ole-tiampati/loita-and-purko-maasai-resist-iucn-

plans-naimina-enkiyio-forest accessed 24/2/14). Ngece et al. (2007: 176) make mention of a splinter group of CCL called the ‘Forum for Maa Development’.

4 _{The analysis presented in this chapter focuses on the intra-Loita conflict for which both leadership}

groups (and followers) were interviewed. Alliances between the leadership groups and outside actors, such as Purko politicians or IUCN officials, are reviewed from the perspective of Loita interviewees and therefore reflect neither a Purko nor a IUCN side of the story. Repeated attempts were made to approach some of these outside actors for an in-depth interview but, apart from fleeting conversations such as that with Purko Minister Ntimama, none materialized.

Fortmann (1990), who studied a series of conflicts about a forest in Adamsville in the US was faced with a similar situation as one of them seemed at first sight to be a clear instance of rural environmentalism. Protests against Megavoltz, a firm that intended to build a wood-fired power plant in Adamsville, were started at the instigation of a small group of local environmentalists but the subsequent protest – the Great Commute – against a forest-management plan turned this interpretation upside down because ‘com- munity members, who had turned out in unprecedented numbers on the “pro- environmental side” of the Megavoltz issue, also turned out on the “anti-environmental side” of the Great Commute’ (Ibid.: 206). Fortmann (Ibid.) shows that this apparent inconsistency, rather than people’s ‘ideological flipflops’, disappears when the protests are seen in terms of people defending their claims to a right to use forest resources for subsistence, the right to a livelihood from forest resources and a right to exclude outsid- ers. All these assertions express claims to access and access control of a resource used by people as a source of livelihood. This was one of the issues at play in Loita’s forest conflicts.

It was not the environmental condition of the forest but access, and particularly con- trol over access, that was one of the key issues at stake in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest conflicts. People in Loita were afraid of loss of access to the forest. The belief that ‘the County Council was trying to snatch the forest’ and that ‘IUCN wanted to grab the for- est’, as one interviewee put it,5 _{was widely shared in Loita and this became clear from} the many conversations and interviews I had in Loita. The plan proposed by Narok County Council and the project devised under IUCN’s expertise were often described as ways of ‘taking away’ the forest from the Loita.6 _{It was thought that if these outside} agencies succeeded in their endeavours, the Loita would ‘lose their say’ over the forest and this could jeopardize their long-held access to the forest.7 _{Maintaining access to the} forest is vital for the Loita Maasai way of life. The forest has a central ritual value, en- sures the ceremonial continuity of the age-group system and structures social life more widely (Kronenburg García 2003). In a more material sense, the forest conflicts reflect a ‘livelihood struggle’ (Bryant 1992: 25) and the Loita Maasai’s opposition is a ‘liveli- hood protest/resistance’ (Bryant 1998: 84). The ‘conflict over access’ research area in political ecology ‘illustrates how those “without” power fight to protect the environ- mental foundations of their livelihood’ (Bryant 1992: 14). From this angle, the overt and almost collective resistance by the Loita Maasai to Narok County Council’s plan and the IUCN project can be seen as a reaction by the Loita Maasai in defence of the envi- ronmental foundations of their livelihood and culture.

A discourse, which may or may not have been sincere and/or strategic, on access loss, threats to livelihood and a culture at peril was adopted by Loita leaders to win backing from the Loita population. During the Narok County Council conflict, the Ilker- in group used it to ‘sensitize’ and ‘train’ the community in workshops. They also dis- tributed printed shirts and cassettes with songs about the forest struggle. The Olorte

5 _{Interview MN: 21/9/01.}

6 _{Interview SS: 11/3/08.}

group considered this to be ‘brainwashing’,8 _{although during the IUCN conflict they} used the same rhetoric at rallies and demonstrations. These political arenas and means of communication were also exploited to accuse the opposing side of ‘selling the forest to so and so’.9 _{This is one way, i.e. in terms of those leaders ‘selling’ and those ‘defend-} ing’ the forest, that people in Loita talked about the intra-Loita conflict. Although the Loita supported a different group of leaders on each occasion, their rationale for sup- porting one or the other group remained, remarkably, the same. Interests between lead- ers and followers may converge in one context but diverge in another.

The rhetoric was not only used by Loita leaders to rally the Loita into opposition but also to frame their problem for the outside world. This is nicely reflected in a booklet that was widely distributed by the Ilkerin group during the Narok County Council con- flict:

For generations, we the Loita Maasai have protected and conserved our Naimina Enkiyio indigenous forest through our traditions and culture. We are its custodians under African customary law and, as the centre of our spiritual lives and the source of water which maintains our livelihood, the forest is sacred to us. Our future survival and the survival of our children and grandchildren depend upon it. Yet our future and that of the forest is in jeopardy. Narok County Council, one of the richest local au- thorities in Kenya, wants to turn the forest into a reserve for the development of mass tourism. If the plan goes ahead we will lose access to the forest for our sacred ceremonies and the use of critical wa- ter resources in the dry season and times of drought. (…) We are fighting through the Kenyan courts to save Naimina Enkiyio but the “power politics” are against us.

(LNECTC 1994: 1 emphasis added)

Although the wording was carefully chosen to appeal to an international community preoccupied with biodiversity conservation and the rights of indigenous peoples, what was at stake was not so much the ecological or environmental status of the forest, but access to and particularly access control over a key environmental resource for their agro-pastoral and cultural way of life. The use of the language of nature conservation by some Loita leaders by presenting the Loita as the indigenous custodians of the forest, as is evident in the quote above, was not necessarily because they were concerned about the ecological status of the forest. It was part of a political strategy to attract (in- ter)national support and funding in their fight to maintain control and access.