Natural resources and biodiversity of the Kenya coast

Abstract

Coastal and marine ecosystems provide important goods and services that when sustainably harnessed can be beneficial to communities and spur economic growth and development. Asa coastal state, Kenya is endowed with rich biodiversity of marine and coastal ecosystems that constitute a major natural resource. The ecosystems, which include coastal forests ,mangrove wetlands, estuaries, sandy beaches and sand dunes, coral reefs, and seagrass beds span across the over 560km running from Vanga in the south to Ishakani in the north and support various marine and coastal species. Kenya vision 2030, an ambitious development blueprint developed in 2008 that aimed at transforming the country into a newly industrializing middle-income country, identified the coastal region and especially tourism as a driver of future national growth, job creation, poverty reduction and wealth generation. For this to happen, healthy well managed coastal and marine ecosystems are key. Historically however, long-term neglect, resource overuse, and poor management and planning have had a major negative impact on the coastal environment. Overuse of fragile coral reefs by local residents and tourists, excessive fishing pressure in the inshore areas, inappropriate land use in coastal areas, and poor development management have severely degraded the value of coastal resources. In addition, discharge of domestic, industrial and agricultural wastes into marine and freshwater ecosystems causes deterioration of water and sediment quality. These have negative impacts on ecosystem integrity, biodiversity conservation, shoreline stability, community livelihood, and revenue generation. The Kenya Coastal Development Project (KCDP) was developed to address some of these challenges while contributing to the poverty alleviation goals. The project was supported by the World Bank's (WB) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) as a significant contribution towards addressing poverty and development issues in Africa's coastal zones. The natural resource management component of KCDP was aimed at improving the sound management and regeneration of natural resources and biodiversity in the coastal and marine environments. Specifically, the component activities sought to conserve biodiversity, identify biodiversity products and markets that could help promote eco-tourism and associated spin-off industries as an avenue of achieving Vision 2030. As a result, biodiversity assessments were conducted to provide an updated status of some coastal and marine ecosystems. The resource assessments were deemed crucial in generating crucial data and information useful in guiding sustainable management of the coastal and marine resources. The biodiversity assessments were planned and conducted in such a way as to capture resources within the range (coastal forests) through the mangroves and seagrass beds to the reef. This chapter highlights results of biodiversity assessments in different ecosystems and recommendations on required interventions for sound management of the resources.