Policy Review | Forest Governance
Forests at a Crossroads: Rethinking Power, Institutions, and Purpose in Kenya’s Forest Law Reforms
By Bonga Na Gava • Forest Conservation & Management Amendment Bill, 2025
The Forest Conservation and Management (Amendment) Bill 2025 seeks to amend the Forest Conservation and Management Act (No. 34 of 2016) to address emerging challenges in forest governance, forest management, decentralisation, and sustainable forest use.
While the FCMA 2016 was enacted, among other objectives, to give effect to Article 69 of the Constitution of Kenya, which provides for the development and sustainable management, including the conservation and rational utilisation, of forest resources for the socio-economic development of the country, the proposed Bill introduces a need for alignment of institutional arrangements.
The proposed amendments raise a critical question: are they positioning forests primarily as ecosystems to be protected, or increasingly as assets to be regulated, secured, and monetised? This invites a deeper reflection on what is shifting beneath the surface.
Consolidation of Power in the Cabinet Secretary’s Office
One of the most striking features of the amendments is the steady consolidation of authority in the office of the Cabinet Secretary, with the amendments of Sections 16, 58, 61, and 71.
In Section 16, the Cabinet Secretary on advice takes lead to designate a uniformed and disciplined forest enforcement unit, including training and oaths of allegiance, embedding executive influence into frontline enforcement structures. This marks a shift from the KFS Board and Internal Security Cabinet Secretary, and concentrates decision-making power closer to the political executive within forestry operations. In a sector that requires ecological sensitivity, neutrality, and long-term stewardship, the concern is that enforcement could increasingly reflect executive priorities rather than being anchored in a stable, multi-institutional framework.
In Section 58, the CS assumes authority over the chain-of-custody system that verifies the origin of forest products across public, community, and private forests, moving a previously technical compliance function into the political executive sphere. Section 61 further consolidates this by empowering the CS to determine, via Gazette notice, which forest products are prohibited for import or export, with breaches attracting criminal penalties. Section 71 completes this shift by retaining regulation-making powers under the CS covering wide-ranging areas from licensing and harvesting to benefit-sharing, charcoal production, eco-tourism, and ecosystem service payments.
Collectively, these amendments reposition the Cabinet Secretary from a policy overseer into the central node of forest governance. While this may improve coordination and enable faster decision-making, it raises structural concerns about politicisation of forest governance, reduced autonomy of technical institutions like KFS, and weakened checks and balances in a sector that requires long-term ecological planning and scientific oversight.
Are these amendments positioning forests to be governed primarily as ecosystems to be protected, or as assets to be regulated, secured, and monetised?
Expanding the KFS Mandate, and Its Tensions
Amendments to Section 8 expand the mandate of the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), shifting it beyond its traditional role of conserving and managing public forests to also include revenue collection, forest security, and the promotion of agroforestry and commercial forestry on private and community land. This creates inherent institutional tension, as the same agency is now expected to both protect forest ecosystems and actively facilitate their commercial use and monetisation.
Within the Bill there is also the introduction of a uniformed and disciplined forest unit through the amendment of Section 16, marking a clear shift toward a securitised model of forest governance. This is further reinforced by the establishment of the Kenya Forest Academy within KFS, which centralises training within the Service.
The introduction of the Director of Forest Regulation with responsibilities spanning standards, compliance, certification, registries, and oversight of major forest-related investments, creates significant overlap with KFS. The critical question is whether this architecture strengthens forest governance through coordination, or weakens it through institutional crowding and politicisation of technical functions.
Conservation vs. Development: The Section 56 Shift
The amendment to Section 56 marks a subtle but significant shift in how public forests are conceptualised within law and policy. By explicitly introducing provisions for easements and wayleaves for public roads, utilities, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure, the law effectively opens up forest land to structured infrastructure development under the authority of KFS.
In practice, this means forests are no longer only framed as protected ecological spaces, but also as corridors through which national development projects can pass. Forest ecosystems are inherently continuous and sensitive, and any fragmentation through roads or utilities can disrupt wildlife movement, water systems, and overall ecological integrity, often triggering secondary pressures such as settlement, logging, and encroachment.
The broader concern is that the scope of what qualifies as “critical installations” may expand over time, gradually normalising the use of protected forests as flexible infrastructure zones rather than ecologically bounded systems that require strict protection.
Devolution: Balancing Local Participation with National Control
The amendment to Section 7 confirms the headquarters of KFS in Nairobi while simultaneously requiring the devolution of its services to ensure accessibility across all parts of Kenya. The amendment to Section 21 recentres policy direction at the national level, with counties functioning within a coordinated framework overseen by KFS and national policy structures.
The result is a governance model that seeks to balance local participation with national coherence, but one where the scope for county-level discretion remains carefully circumscribed to ensure uniformity in forest management across the country.
Dryland Forests: A New but Complex Framework
A new Section 43A proposes that dryland forests be managed sustainably, promoting integrated management through both traditional and conventional systems. It further mandates KFS and the Institute, in collaboration with county governments and private landowners, to upscale both commercial and non-commercial agro-silvo-pastoralism, as well as fruit and fodder tree production in dryland areas.
While the amendment reflects an effort to modernise dryland forestry and align it with livelihood and climate resilience goals, it also raises concerns about the potential over-commercialisation of fragile ecosystems. The multi-actor implementation framework introduces a complex governance structure with unclear lines of accountability and limited enforceable safeguards to ensure that sustainability principles are upheld in practice.
A New Professional Body for Forest Practitioners
The insertion of Section 6A establishes a professional body of forest practitioners mandated to self-regulate standards of practice and professional ethics within the sector, with operationalisation guided by the Cabinet Secretary in consultation with the Forestry Society of Kenya. It may introduce a “technical power layer” between forest policy decisions and their implementation, where professional certification and standards influence how forest decisions are justified and executed.
The Missing Voice: Youth in Forest Governance
For a sector that will shape livelihoods, climate resilience, and land use for decades, the absence of explicit youth recognition in the Bill feels out of step with both Kenya’s demographics and the reality that young people are already central to environmental action.
Much of the Bill leans toward centralisation, commercialisation, and technicalisation. Without intentional youth inclusion, decision-making risks becoming even more top-down and expert-driven, missing out on innovation, local knowledge, and long-term stewardship perspectives that youth bring.
If the Bill is shaping the future of forests, then youth are not a side note, they are the future managers, entrepreneurs, and custodians of these systems. Leaving them out now risks building a system that is technically strong, but socially incomplete.
The Direction Ahead
Taken individually, many of these amendments can be justified on grounds of efficiency, coordination, or modernisation. But viewed collectively, they reveal a broader trajectory.
Power is being centralised. Institutional mandates are expanding. Forests are being drawn more deeply into systems of regulation, enforcement, infrastructure, and economic value.
In Kenya, forests are more than policy objects. They are water towers, biodiversity reservoirs, cultural landscapes, and sources of livelihood for millions. If forests are governed primarily as assets to be secured, accessed, and monetised, the risk is that their ecological and social functions become secondary. If governance remains grounded in their role as living ecosystems, then economic, regulatory, and infrastructure decisions must operate within ecological limits, not override them.
The direction is not yet fixed. But the signals are clear. That is precisely why this moment calls for close attention, critical reflection, and informed public engagement.
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