Landscape of the Week: Sasumua Watershed

A landscape for water, food and nature in the heart of Kenya…

The Landscapes Blog travels to East Africa this week, as we hone in on water issues this August. Guest authors, Dr. John Gathenya, Climate Change Research Fellow at the University of Reading, Walker Institute for Climate System Research and Dr. Sara Namirembe, Research Analyst/Coordinator, ICRAF’s Pro-poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa (PRESA) Project, write about the Sasumua Watershed for the Landscape of the Week. This case draws together the integrated approach and multi-stakeholder processes to manage the valuable water resources of the watershed. 

Sasumua watershed is located west of the Aberdare Ranges in Central Kenya, East Africa. Within its boundaries lies Njabini village. ‘Njabi-ini’ in the local language means ‘in the marsh land’, a name that points to the existence of the vast wetland that for centuries provided storage of water that feeds the streams springing from this area. Covering a total area of 107 km², it’s vital for provision of water and food to the local community and to a fifth of the 4 Million people in Kenya’s capital city Nairobi. It is also home to the beautiful Aberdare National Park and the Aberdare Forest Reserve. The forest has a rich pool of biodiversity, and the trees sequester carbon and hence are important in climate change mitigation.

Sasumua Reservoir was constructed on Sasumua River in the 1950s to serve the growing Nairobi City. The reservoir, with a volume of 19 Million m³, is constructed on Sasumua River but it is fed from two sub-catchments in the headwaters of Kiburu and Chania rivers by means of river diversions works and channels (see map). Sasumua water treatment plant, managed by Nairobi Water Company, processes 64,000 m³ of water daily. The Sasumua catchment is highly seasonal, flowing only during the rainy season, while Kiburu and Chania are perennial streams.

Before 1963 the area was managed as large scale farms, mainly under pasture. After Kenya’s independence, these farms were subdivided and sold. Now, half of the area contributing to the reservoir is under intensive cultivation mainly by small scale farmers with individual parcels averaging 2 or 3 acres. They practice a commercially oriented type of farming with crops such as potatoes, cabbages, peas, and carrots grown for markets within Nairobi City. Some farmers grow flowers as outgrowers for large flower exporters. Dairy farming and sheep rearing is also prominent here. 17,500 people live in the watershed, and the population is growing steadily.

Runoff that comes from the intensively cultivated hillslopes carries soil and other pollutants into the reservoir, compromising water quality and increasing the cost of water production.  The Water Act 2002 of Kenya provided the formation of a Water Resource User Association (WRUA) to carry out watershed management activities at the grass-roots level. Sasumua WRUA was formed to spearhead participatory watershed management, involving key stakeholders such as the local community, Nairobi Water Company, Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Forestry Service, and relevant government ministries that are involved in agriculture and the environment.

Studies led by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) PRESA Project have aimed at eventually setting up a functional reward-based scheme to incentivize catchment conservation. Without such a scheme, the conservation efforts by the farmers are unlikely to deliver the level of runoff water quality that would be ideal for a sustainable city water supply. Conditions are likely to worsen as population pressure increases and more harmful pollutants from the growing town centres find their way into the river. Preliminary biophysical and socio-economic analysis indicates the financial investment in catchment conservation that would deliver a significant improvement in water quality and reduction in water treatment costs is higher than what the land owners in the watershed would be willing to accept to implement land use measures that deliver these benefits. Although the economic analysis is convincing, implementing such a scheme will be far from easy.

The Kenyan law does not explicitly prohibit a reward-based scheme, but there are few partly because of some policy-related obstacles. The Lake Naivasha-Malewa Equitable Payments for Watershed Services Project implemented by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) is one good example. The Nairobi Water Company, which is a public-private enterprise, would be hesitant to finance a reward-based scheme for two reasons. The Water Company pays a levy to the Kenya Forest for the conservation and use of the part of the watershed within the forest. The company is also required to pay a water abstraction fee to the Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA), which should be used for catchment conservation especially on agricultural areas.

However, WRMA has a national mandate, and it may not necessarily choose to spend the revenue collected in proportion to the watersheds from where it is collected,  they may choose to invest elsewhere. This may look disadvantageous but it ensures some level of equity. Watersheds that do not generate finances but are important for rural water supply may still get support for conservation. In Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, the concept of a Water Fund has been developed by the Nature Conservancy and its partners. Water Funds are financial tools that gather investments from water users and direct the funding toward conservation of upstream land areas that filter and regulate water supply. These funds are seen as a smart way to minimize water treatment costs and reduce the chance of water shortages in the future. Would a Water Fund be a preferable alternative in Kenya?

In the case of the Sasumua watershed, there would be severe hurdles to overcome. Kenya has a Water Services Trust Fund (WSTF) that raises funds from the government and other development partners. This fund provides support limited to community-driven water supply and sanitation projects in marginalized areas. WRMA has adopted WSTF’s model of Community Project Cycle (CPC), and it now channels its funds for mobilization of communities to form WRUAs through the WSTF. WRMA is mandated to collect water fees from water users and some of the revenue goes to catchment conservation. If a water fund was set up, it would be seen as competing for the water fees with, and duplicating the functions of WRMA. A Water Fund would benefit from money raised from other agencies and would have the flexibility of investing in reward-based schemes as a means of enhancing rural livelihoods and conserving natural resources.  Could such a water fund be structured so that benefits from carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation are bundled up to the benefit of local communities without causing conflicts with important stakeholders such as Water Resources Management Authority, Kenya Forest Service and Kenya Wildlife Service?

ICRAF has been engaging with the government of Kenya to integrate payments for environmental services into the national land and water policies currently under development. It is also organizing stakeholder consultations where landowners, policy makers and potential ecosystem buyers can dialogue based on research findings to see how best such financial mechanisms can be structured.  Not surprisingly, landowners are willing to engage in such a scheme as they see it as a more fair form of partnership in watershed management – other stakeholders are still hesitant.  ICRAF plans to facilitate farmer-to-farmer dialogue in the adjacent watersheds to scale up the demand by farmers for PES as a fairer approach.

Further Reading:   

1. Goldman R.L., S. Benitez, T. Boucher, A. Calvache, G. Daily, P. Kareiva, T. Kroeger, and A. Ramos. 2012. Water funds and payments for ecosystem services: practice learns from theory and theory can learn from practice. Oryx, 46(1), 55–63.
2. Goldman, R.L., S. Benitez, A. Calvache, and A. Ramos. 2010. Water Funds: Protecting Watersheds for Nature and People. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, USA.
3. Mwangi, J.K., J.M. Gathenya, S. Namirembe, and H. Mwangi. 2011. Institutional and Policy Requirements for Payments for Watershed Services in Kenya: Case study of Sasumua Watershed, Kenya. PRESA Policy Brief No. 2. Nairobi: ICRAF.