Paper short abstract:

We explore resource extraction in the Sacred Forests of Coastal Kenya and its impacts on people living in the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Land use, land tenure and local attitudes changes over the last 40 years show that sacred forests are a new frontier for extraction and capitalistic encroachment.

Paper long abstract:

African landscapes are currently undergoing rapid land-use change, driven by a combination of factors including population growth, agricultural and industrial expansion, mega-infrastructure development, changing lifestyles, and colonial legacies. The Mijikenda Kaya forests located in coastal Kenya, once revered and considered untouchable, have come under massive pressure in recent decades from logging, land grabbing, and conversion for industrial use and infrastructure development.

This research uses qualitative methods to investigate the political ecology of resource extraction and its impacts on the culture and local attitudes of the people living in the Mijikenda Kaya Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The paper uses satellite imagery to map changes in land use. It documents empirical evidence of changing land tenure in and around the sacred forests over the last 40 years (1980-2020). We explore consumption patterns and the market for forest resources, using the case study of Kaya Rabai, one of the nine sacred forests.

The results show that sacred forests have become the new frontier for resource extraction. Satellite imagery results show massive encroachment by capitalist investors, a significant reduction of forest cover, with selected species being targeted, and a constellation of new infrastructure including houses, roads, and electricity power lines. Plans to build a superhighway and a standard gauge railway line near the sacred forest will bring further changes. The recognition of the sacred forests as World Heritage Sites and National Monuments seems to have done little to stop the ongoing destruction of the sacred forests.