Court reverses Ruto's lifting of logging ban in Kenya

Court reverses Ruto's lifting of logging ban in Kenya
by AFP Staff Writers
Nairobi (AFP) Aug 2, 2023

A court in Kenya has blocked President William Ruto from lifting a near six-year ban on logging, the petitioners said Wednesday, in a win for conservationists.

The Environment and Land Court ordered a 14-day stay on Ruto's contentious repeal of a logging moratorium introduced in 2018 to curb the rapid disappearance of forests.

When lifting the ban in July, Ruto said it was "foolishness" to let mature trees rot while sawmills were importing timber, and that the move would create jobs.

The Law Society of Kenya challenged the decision in court, saying the government had not made the scientific case for lifting the ban or adequately consulted the community about its impact.

The court "granted the Law Society's application staying the implementation of the policy directive", the legal advocacy organisation said Wednesday on Twitter, which has been rebranded as X.

In its ruling, dated August 1, the court also issued orders stopping the issuance of logging licences by the state.

The matter will next be heard in court on August 14.

"We have made a good case and... the interim injunction is what we were hopeful that the court would give us," the society's lawyer Kennedy Waweru told AFP.

Conservationists fiercely opposed the lifting of the ban, saying it was contrary to Ruto's pledge to plant 15 billion trees and bolster Kenya's forest cover.

But the president, who is hosting an international climate change summit in September in Nairobi, said he remained firm on his commitments.

"There has been concern on the lifting of the moratorium on tree harvesting," he said on Wednesday.

"For avoidance of doubt, that will not be an occasion to reverse our tree planting exercise. We are going to make sure that (the lifting of the ban)... does not lead to what we have seen in the past."

In 2018, a government taskforce said the felling of indigenous trees in Kenya's forests was "rampant" and warned 5,000 hectares a year were being cleared.

In its court submission, the Law Society of Kenya said that logging activities had "already begun in earnest".

It said the ban was lifted in "complete disregard of the crucial role that forests play in mitigating climate change, preserving biodiversity, and safeguarding vital ecosystems".

Kenya's timber industry employs 50,000 people directly and 300,000 indirectly, according to government figures, and the decision to lift the ban came as the economy reels from joblessness and high inflation.

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