Abstract:
The UN Millennium Goal (MDG) 7 aims to ensure environmental sustainability, with some of its
targets being halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and reversing loss of
environmental resources by 2015. Although challenges exist for developing countries like Kenya
in this endeavor including climate change, financial scarcity and impropriety, impressive
progress is feasible with workable checks in natural resource exploitation. For example, actively
engaging all stakeholders in implementing UN Agenda 21 is important in this regard. Indeed, the
need for its decisive implementation has become more urgent now than ever before owing to
climate change that has seen once perennial rivers becoming seasonal. In turn, this has led to
significant water scarcity and drought, taxing animal and crop husbandry, with adverse health
and socio-economic consequences in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, human activities
including wood and sand harvesting, quarrying, charcoal burning, forest cultivation, casual use of
pesticides and other chemicals have not only increased water scarcity, but also appreciably
polluted it. It is on the basis of this backdrop that a study was carried out to determine the level of
stakeholder engagement, governance challenges and lessons learned in initiating a water dam
project in Taita District, Kenya. The study employed qualitative methods of data collection
including desk research, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, photography, direct
observation and life history accounts. This paper presents the findings of the study which include
marked stakeholder de-participation and missing governance plan and thereafter suggest their
deliberate reversal through strategic decision-making, governance and sustainable use of water in
rural KenyaThe UN Millennium Goal (MDG) 7 aims to ensure environmental sustainability, with some of its
targets being halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and reversing loss of
environmental resources by 2015. Although challenges exist for developing countries like Kenya
in this endeavor including climate change, financial scarcity and impropriety, impressive
progress is feasible with workable checks in natural resource exploitation. For example, actively
engaging all stakeholders in implementing UN Agenda 21 is important in this regard. Indeed, the
need for its decisive implementation has become more urgent now than ever before owing to
climate change that has seen once perennial rivers becoming seasonal. In turn, this has led to
significant water scarcity and drought, taxing animal and crop husbandry, with adverse health
and socio-economic consequences in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, human activities
including wood and sand harvesting, quarrying, charcoal burning, forest cultivation, casual use of
pesticides and other chemicals have not only increased water scarcity, but also appreciably
polluted it. It is on the basis of this backdrop that a study was carried out to determine the level of
stakeholder engagement, governance challenges and lessons learned in initiating a water dam
project in Taita District, Kenya. The study employed qualitative methods of data collection
including desk research, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, photography, direct
observation and life history accounts. This paper presents the findings of the study which include
marked stakeholder de-participation and missing governance plan and thereafter suggest their
deliberate reversal through strategic decision-making, governance and sustainable use of water in
rural Kenya