Environmental Reconstructions in the Upper Tana region, Kenya

Abstract

This article sets out to unravel aspects of environmental changes in the Upper Tana during the second millennium AD. This aspect has not been adequately addressed in the Upper Tana. This makes it clear that a lacuna exists in the study of communities of the Upper Tana and the way they interact with their environment in the past and present times. The objective of this article is to evaluate the relationship between human activities and environmental change in the Upper Tana from AD 1000 to 1950. It is hypothesized that the advent of iron technology and its attendant economic activities led to the depletion of indigenous forests and the general environmental degradation. The article has employed archaeological, ethnographic, oral and historical methodologies to gather data on vegetation change in the Upper Tana and other related regions. The article, argues that livestock grazing, iron smelting, slush and burn agriculture, and the clearing of forests for housing are key contributors to vegetation change in the Upper Tana. Results from oral reconstruction of the past vegetation of the area, and using the plant succession theory, shows that the lowland area of the Upper Tana is actually savanna with scattered trees probably inhabited by grazers. It is posited that the above factors, together with persistent droughts have altered the vegetation cover of the area. What we have today is colonization of less desirable stunted growth. The theory advanced here is that the vegetation change has been a result of human activities. Overwhelmingly, results the study that the researcher carried out, showed that the causes of these changes have been socio-economically associated with the expansion of agricultural communities into the area; rather than through climatic factors. Colonisation and other forces of modernistion have also contributed to the underlying problem. The article concludes that anthropogenetic factors have greatly contributed to environmental change in the upper Tana. Certainly, environmental change is a global phenomenon that has elicited research interests due to its negative impacts on human population. It is recommended that knowledge of environmental change in the past should be used to extrapolate modern environmental challenges affecting African ecosystems.