Environmental conflict looms over Kenyan refugee camp

Thousands of Somalis are fleeing the conflict and severe drought in their country and cross over the border into Kenya. Most of them end up in Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee camp. But the camp is full and natural resources are becoming scarce.

By Kassim Mohamed

35-year-old Ahmed Billow is cutting down branches from an acacia tree on the periphery of Ifo, one of three overflowing refugee camps collectively known as Dadaab, located in Kenya’s parched and bare North Eastern Province.

With a metal axe for a tool, the dark slender man is cutting the branches one by one - a few steps away several bundles of firewood are waiting to be loaded on donkey carts. Billow will sell the firewood in Dadaab.

Not enough aid
“I come from Bardere,” he says. “We crossed into Kenya because we lost all our animals and life was hard back home. We thought it would be better here, but after some time we figured out the aid ration the UNHCR was giving us was not enough. I then decided to fetch firewood to fill the gap.”

With six other mouths to feed at his humble home, the spindly Somali man has to work his own way out of the woods. It takes him one week to gather a full donkey cart load, sometimes travelling as far as 50 kilometers away from the camp.

Snakes, lions and hyenas
“It’s very, very hard work,” he says. “I spend several days in the bush. It’s not safe at all; there are snakes, lions and hyenas and at night I am very vulnerable to attacks. Sometimes I also receive threats from pastoralists who say we cut down trees.”

One donkey cart load of firewood will earn Billow 6.35 euros; he can only make three trips per month. “This donkey cart is not mine; it belongs to a relative who came to Dadaab in 1991. He told me I should work and that we would divide the money equally. So per month I get roughly 9 euros,” says Billow. Although that doesn’t seem much, Billow says it does make a difference in his family’s life.

Ahmed is not the only one who has picked up an axe to chop wood. Several other refugees have come up with the similar idea. That, and the big number of refugees is putting increasing pressure on the environment. The local Kenyan communities are raising the alarm. Their leaders told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that the refugees are causing environmental degradation.
Somalis are to blame
65-year-old Farah Aden is a Somali-Kenyan from the local community. Once he was a wealthy man, but now he has fallen to poverty. In three years time, he lost over 200 goats and 120 cows due to successive periods of drought. He attributes the dry spell in this devastated part of the Horn of Africa to deforestation caused by Somali refugees.
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“Twenty years ago, before the Somali refugees came to settle here, this place was green. It used to rain at least once a year, but now its drought after drought."

"I want to tell them not to cut down any more trees. We love them as we would love our brothers and sisters, but we also want to survive. This is a recipe for another conflict,” says Aden, while pointing at a donkey cart loaded with firewood.

Ironically, the walls of Farah’s compound are covered with US AID vegetable oil tins flattened out and hammered together - an indication that he benefits indirectly from the refugee camps.