In 2007, the World Bank funded The Natural Resource Management Project for better management of water and forest resources in the Cherangany Hills area of Kenya (The World Bank Group, 2015, para. 1).
The negative outcome was the aggressive eviction of thousands of people from their homes and the aftermath for those families. Initially the residents welcomed the initiative, because one part of the proposed project would lead to their rights to their lands being better acknowledged, but that part of the project was dropped (Kenrick, Forest Peoples Programme, 2014, p. 1). When the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) received the funding, however, they began clearing the Cherangany Hills area by burning down occupied homes and food stores (Kenrick, …show more content…
As a minimum, they could have at least taken the residents to another area and then burned down their houses, rather than burning them in front of them, which had to be pretty traumatic for most of them. I am divided on how much of the blame can be attributed to the World Bank, though. I agree with their statement, “The World Bank is not linked to these evictions and nor has the World Bank ever supported evictions […]” (The World Bank Group, 2014, para. 1). They were not given all of the information and because of this most likely did not know what the KFS had planned. On the other hand, though, I think they should have followed up sooner, as the evictions took place over six years of the seven years while under the World Bank’s project (Kenrick, Forest Peoples Programme, 2014, p. 1). The World Bank did not investigate the matter officially until after the project closing date (Bolvaran, 2014, p. 7). They seem to be taking a stand of plausible deniability, but over such a long time span, it seems a bit far-fetched that they had no idea what was …show more content…
This is because there are so many factors to consider before funding a large project, and many might be overlooked. This is especially true when the area is not familiar to the decision makers. As with any large project, there are also a lot of unknown elements, which might not arise until after the project has
The negative outcome was the aggressive eviction of thousands of people from their homes and the aftermath for those families. Initially the residents welcomed the initiative, because one part of the proposed project would lead to their rights to their lands being better acknowledged, but that part of the project was dropped (Kenrick, Forest Peoples Programme, 2014, p. 1). When the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) received the funding, however, they began clearing the Cherangany Hills area by burning down occupied homes and food stores (Kenrick, …show more content…
As a minimum, they could have at least taken the residents to another area and then burned down their houses, rather than burning them in front of them, which had to be pretty traumatic for most of them. I am divided on how much of the blame can be attributed to the World Bank, though. I agree with their statement, “The World Bank is not linked to these evictions and nor has the World Bank ever supported evictions […]” (The World Bank Group, 2014, para. 1). They were not given all of the information and because of this most likely did not know what the KFS had planned. On the other hand, though, I think they should have followed up sooner, as the evictions took place over six years of the seven years while under the World Bank’s project (Kenrick, Forest Peoples Programme, 2014, p. 1). The World Bank did not investigate the matter officially until after the project closing date (Bolvaran, 2014, p. 7). They seem to be taking a stand of plausible deniability, but over such a long time span, it seems a bit far-fetched that they had no idea what was …show more content…
This is because there are so many factors to consider before funding a large project, and many might be overlooked. This is especially true when the area is not familiar to the decision makers. As with any large project, there are also a lot of unknown elements, which might not arise until after the project has