Comparison Of Livelihoods Of Lake Naivasha

Integrated Assessment on Economic Structure, Water Resource Management and Particular Forms of Ecosystem Services Mechanisms influence the Livelihood outcomes in Upstream and Downstream of Lake Naivasha, Kenya.Lake Naivasha is the highest of rift valley lakes and it is the second largest freshwater lake in Kenya. The lake edge supports dense vegetation, which in turn, supports a thriving bird population. Lake Naivasha is a Ramsar site being a wetland of international importance with a rich biodiversity, including some endangered species, and supports tourism and research activities and surrounded by agricultural holdings and game reserves whose produce constitutes significant percentage of the nation's foreign exchange earnings. The land use pattern in Naivasha catchment changed over the years with the arrival of sedentary farming and ranching.

Pastoral activities have given way to intensive irrigated farming, land subdivisions, intensive use of agrochemicals, deforestation and growth of township, all of which adversely affect the ecosystem(LNRA February 1999).Urban expansion in Kenya is closely associated with a tremendous increase in demand for land, which is highly related to population growth and movement. Naivasha town is the fastest growing town in Kenya. The growth is fuelled by increasing pressure from horticulture and floriculture farming business around Lake Naivasha, tourist activities in the region, rural urban migration as a result of falling farm income from traditional cash crops, and commercial enterprises and good prospects for job opportunities(IUCN/LNRA 2005).

Increasing population growth and intense land utilization in the catchment are likely accelerate unplanned settlements in Navasha town and increase demand for food thus promoting intensive farming practice, increase destruction of forest cover to open steep slope cultivation, and charcoal burnings.The resources in Lake Navasha and its surrounding area have been subjected to various threats. The Lake is under threat of nutrient enrichment and pollution from urban and agricultural activities in its catchment and surrounding land (ibid). In other similar situations discharges from highly fertilized agricultural lands give rise to nuisance growth of aquatic plants such as algal blooms resulting from increased nutrient load of phosphorus and nitrogen, leading to decrease water transparency and decrease in dissolved oxygen concentration.

Several species and toxic water plants have became weeds in the lake itself while increased in nutrient levels and soil disturbance have encouraged the growth of terrestrial weeds in the Lake zone. The other serious threat to the ecological and economic sustainability of the Lake is the amount of water abstraction per year. Moreover, the existing and proposed geothermal development may affect the lake level through abstraction for drilling wells. Waste water from geothermal wells containing high fluoride, arsenic and mercury levels are potentially dangerous if improperly disposed (LNRA February 1999).The lucrative economic activities appeared in the last 15 years around Lake Navasha (horticulture and flower growing farm activities) and all depend enormously on the availability and quality of water.

These intensive and relatively new economic activities co-exist with traditional activities in the area such as small farming and fishing and with the non-solved problems of water supply for domestic use (Boix Fayos 2002). The growth of large commercial scale activities in form of the booming flower industry along with the existing small farms around the Naivasha lake have implications on the demand for resources of this ecosystem. The economic activities also cause population growth through generation of employment.

The population benefits from the ecosystem services but also causes direct and indirect impacts on the ecosystem (WB 2005). As a result, it request a need for sustainable and integrated assessment on water resource management and socio economic development plan that should be put to harmonize various stakeholders' concern in Lake Naivasha catchment. Therefore, Integrated Assessment (IA) approach proposed to highlight the interdependency between policies, activities and aspiration in order to identify constraints and explore mutual alternatives.

1.2. Socioeconomic linkage

According to the United Nation (UN) estimate world population will increase by at least 3 billion in the next 50 years and world's urban population is growing twice as fast as the total population. The rapid urbanization, especially in developing countries will continue to be one of the crucial factors that must be taken into account in the human dimension of the 21st century (Torrey 1998). And yet, despite this growing global trend towards an urban society, how urban and suburban areas function as ecological systems is poorly known (Grove 1996).The lack of basic knowledge of the urbanization process and its ecological impacts has made us unable to asses, much less to manage and restore the urban ecosystem in both urban cores and suburban fringes. Thus, increasing population has generated great pressure on the sustainability of natural resources and the environmental conditions.

Population increase is often associated with urban sprawl, resulting in a decrease of agricultural land and forested areas and producing problems such as increased pressure on food security, loss of biodiversity, and deterioration of environmental conditions. Timely and accurate estimation of population distribution is of considerable significance for decision makers in urban land-use planning and for a better understanding of the interactions between population growth and social, economic and environmental conditions (Yu and Wu 2006)Remote sensing, as a means of acquiring information about the physical environment, cannot be directly applied for estimating or modeling socio-economic activity. Socio-economic activities conceptualized as socio cultural environment represent people understanding of and reactions to physical environment, therefore, socio-economic activities may be closely related to physical environment.

Socio economic information such as census data cannot be obtained on a timely basis. Remote sensing imagery however, can be obtained on a daily or monthly basis and thereby has the potential for providing updated socio economic information. For a few developing and less developed countries, socio economic information is unavailable and unreliable. Remote sensing imagery may be the only reliable resources for estimating socio economic information and may also used as a cross validation(Mesev 2007). In addition to direct estimation of socioeconomic indices, remote sensing information has also been used to better understand and model socio-economic phenomena (Weeks, Getis et al.

2004). There is limited research outcome that has been applied remote sensing information in economic research.There are now a number of opportunities to pursue some of the core social science research issues more closely through remote sensing and GIS. Effort is made on issues of population, equity/ equality, institutions, (under) development and decision making as they relate to resource use and environment change(Liverman and ... 1998).

However, integration between remote sensing researchers and social scientists, particularly on socio-economic research linkages are poorly understood in developing countries. Therefore, this study tries to fill this gap and estimate socio-economic information/indicators and examine socio-economic activity modeling through integration of remote sensing information and other environmental and socio-economic information in GIS format. And analyse the land- use/ cover change in upstream and downstream and assess the major driving forces for growth and change in economic structure of Lake Naivasha region, Kenya as a case.1.3. Economic and Environmental LinkageMany upland and mountain communities manage landscapes in ways that benefit lowland and downstream communities and cities, but most do not receive any benefits from the services they provide.

These environmental services include clean and abundant water supplies from watersheds, erosion control, timber and non-timber forest products, biodiversity protection, recreational areas, culturally important landscapes, and carbon sequestration for alleviation of climate change. Payments for environmental services (PES) can compensate natural resource stewards for the services they provide while aligning incentives for local communities, investors and other stakeholders (Pennington 2005). Interest in PES schemes and their potential to alleviate poverty is growing among international development and conservation organizations as well as multi- and bi-lateral funding organizations.As ecosystems have become increasingly degraded worldwide, and the valuable environmental services (ES) that they provide lost or reduced, there has been a growing search for solutions.

Among these, the payments for environmental services (PES) approach has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries (Wunder, Engel et al. 2008). Payments for environmental services (PES) are relatively new schemes seeking to support positive environmental externalities through the transfer of financial resources from beneficiaries of certain environmental services to those who provide these services or are fiduciaries of environmental resources. Recent years have seen considerable interest using PES to finance conservation, however, very few studies try to attempt PES in developing countries, particularly in Africa (Frost and Bond 2008) in Zimbabwe, (Jack 2009) in Kenya, and (Turpie, Marais et al.

2008) in South Africa and it remains poorly tested in wetlands conservation.Wetlands are amongst the Earth's most productive ecosystems, providing divers array of important ecological functions and services, ranging from flood control and flow control to ground water recharge and discharge, water quality maintenance, habitat and nursery for plant and animal species, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and other life support functions (Birol, Karousakis et al. 2006). However, many wetlands have been treated as wasteland and drained or otherwise degraded (Baebier 1997).

Currently, the primary direct drivers of degradation and loss of wetlands include infrastructural development, land conversion, water withdrawals, pollution, overharvesting and overexploitation and the introduction of invasive alien species. Moreover, wetlands are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities, including conversion of wetlands to intensive agricultural use and to other industrial and residential uses, their drainage as excessive irrigation in agriculture; pollution as a result of nutrient runoff from intensive agricultural production and industry. Other factors considered to affect the management of wetlands include poverty and economic inequality, pressure from population growth, immigration and mass tourism and social and cultural conflicts(Skourtos 2003).Many studies identified that Lake Naivasha provides a wide wealth of services that are fundamental for both environment and people.

The capacity of the Lake ecosystem to provide such services is seriously at risk because of increasing environmental degradation and over-use (Permatasari 2004; Becht, Odada et al. 2005; Becht and Nyaoro 2006; Mohammedjemal 2006; Mpusia 2006). However, analysis of economic and environmental linkage between the upstream and downstream in Naivasha catchment through a market for environmental services is not yet entirely addressed and proven.

Thus, this study tries to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for different attributes (ecosystem services) of Lake Naivasha and assess applicability of payment for environmental services (PES) for watershed service (downstream water users paying upstream land use practice concerned with their water resource management) and examine land use change in upstream improve downstream watershed service provision and livelihood (welfare of the poor) consequences of a payment for watershed services program likely beneficial to upstream communities. Finally, it is possible to provide policy-makers with much needed information on the public benefits generated by Lake Naivasha in terms of its use and non use values that accrue to the Kenya public at large.

1.4 Objective of the study

The major objective of this study is an integrated assessment on economic structure, water resource management and particular forms of ecosystem services mechanisms influence the livelihood outcomes in upstream and downstream of Lake Naivasha, Kenya.

Specific objectives:

To analyze the land- use/ cover change in upstream and downstream of Lake Naivasha region.To explore the applicability of remote sensing technologies to estimate socio-economic information in Lake Naivasha, Kenya.To explore socio-economic activity modeling through integration of remote sensing information and other environmental and socio-economic information in GIS format.To examine the driving forces for growth and change in economic structure of Naivasha area (city of Naivasha , Tourism industry and flower farms).To estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for different attributes (ecosystem services) of Lake Naivasha catchment watershed service (WS) service to apply payment for environmental services (PES).

Research Questions

What changes have occurred in land -use/cover as a result of rapid population pressure, urbanization and flower farms expansion in Naivasha region the last two decades?How changes in land-use/cover do affects the future development patterns if the current threats continue or (How future development patterns affected if the current threats continue?)How remote sensing is an alternative means to estimate population in Lake Naivasha?How remote sensing is an alternative means to estimate Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?How remote sensing is an alternative means to estimate employment?What would be the nature of population and employment density in Lake Naivasha?How do we apply information generated by remote sensing technology to analyse the pattern and model socio-economic activity in Lake Naivasha, using GIS?What are the major driving forces for the observed growth and change in Naivasha region and particularly the city of Naivasha?How has the economic structure of Naivasha region determined by the growth of flower farms?How tourism industries influence the livelihood of Naivasha people?How much is the individual marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for different attributes (ecosystem services) of Lake Navasha watershed service (WS) service?Does payment for environmental services (PES) is applicable in Lake Naivasha?Can Land use change in upstream improve downstream watershed service provision?Are the livelihood (welfare of the poor) consequences of a payment for watershed services programme likely to beneficial to upstream communities?What policy lessons learn from the experience of Lake Naivasha?To be continued on explore ideas and points for the following sections:1.6. Research theme2.

Conceptual and Theoretical framework2.1. Integration between remote sensing and GIS with Social Studies2.2. Payment for Environmental Service (PES)2.3. Environmental Valuation Methods and approaches2.4. Previous application2.4.1.

Integration between remote sensing and GIS with economic research2.4.2. PES2.4.3. Environmental Valuation3. Research Approach4. Materials and Methods4.1. Study area4.2 Data Source4.3 Methodology