Posted on August, 27 2012

Kenya's Naivasha basin involves a broad group of stakeholders including large horticulture companies and their employees, smallholder farmers, local government and basin inhabitants, and those dependent on the broader Kenyan economy and trade.

For an agriculture-based economy that is completely dependent on its water resources for economic production, the social, economic, financial (investment), regulatory and reputational risks associated with a deteriorating bio-physical environment are significant. Given its links to the national economy and the
international export markets, these risks are not localized within the basin, but extend through to the rest of Kenya.

The central aim of this paper is to articulate the risks for each of these groups and to highlight the commonalities between them, or in other words, the shared risks between corporate, government and civil society stakeholders. In so doing, these stakeholders can recognize the incentive for a common path to achieving improved water resource management in the basin and the future economic and environmental sustainability of Lake Naivasha.