Eastern Arc Mountains and Coastal Forests of Tanzania and Kenya ...

Economic Activities on the CoastThe economic situation on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts has worsened during the last decadebecause of declines in the tourism, textiles and cashew nut industries. Coast tourism is goingthrough particularly bad times, having suffered successive blows from health scares, gulf wars,competition with other tourist destinations (especially South Africa), ethnic clashes (in Kenya)and terrorist activities (both Kenya and Tanzania). Currently there is severe over-capacity in thehotel and tourism service industry. In June 2003, hotel staff in Kenya received reduced payfollowing the suspension of British Airways flights because of terrorist threats.In the early 1990s, textile manufacturing was the leading industrial category in coastal Kenya interms of the numbers of registered companies (24 out of 159: UNEP 1998). Several of thesefirms have since collapsed as a result of massive importation of cheap second hand clothing(mitimbu). The cashew nut industry, which used to be a significant contributor to rurallivelihoods, has also suffered severely from competition with India and from internal problems.A cashew nut processing factory at Kilifi, on the north coast of Kenya, finally closed down in thelate 1990s after years of proa blems. As a result of the declines in the tourism, textiles andcashew nut industries, many people have lost jobs and livelihoods, with significant effects to thelocal economy. Some of the strain has been borne by the forests, which play an important role inmitigating poverty. For example, more than 40 percent of household consumption in the EasternArc Mountains is forest-derived (GEF 2002).Other industrial activities, many of them based on the coast because of maritime access toimports and exports, have been more robust. These include: cement, lime and quarrying; steelrolling mills and iron smelting; oil refining; manufacture of paints, plastics, rubber, chemical andmetal products; wood processing (paper, pulp, board and timber); light processing for export ofagricultural crops (coffee, groundnuts, cotton and sisal); and food and beverage industries. Aselsewhere in the world there has been considerable growth in information technology-basedservices, although these have been constrained by poor landline facilities, high telephone chargesand poor connectivity. There has also been increasing South African investment in the coastaleconomy, particularly in Tanzania.Industries outside the major cities and towns are mostly based on mineral resources, especiallysand, salt and limestone. Sand for building is mined in many localities along the coast, notably atMazeras near Mombasa. Silica sand for glass manufacture was formerly mined in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. (Ironically, the old sand quarries have since become a distinctive biodiversity sitewithin the forest, especially for frogs and birds). Extensive salt works have been established atvarious sites (e.g. in Tanga District in Tanzania and at Ngomeni, Gongoni and Kurawa inKenya), where they have been responsible for local destruction of mangrove forests. Limestonedeposits are abundant along the coast. They form a 4-8 km band, parallel to the coast and about70 m thick from across the Kenya-Tanzanian border north to Malindi. All along the coast, corallimestone is quarried as building blocks, but there is local variation in limestone quality,affecting its potential use. In Tiwi on the south Kenyan coast it is used for lime manufacture. Inthe Bamburi area just north of Mombasa, limestone is quarried on a large scale for cementmanufacture by a subsidiary of La Farge, a French-based multinational. This site at Bamburi hasbecome famous for its ecological restoration of quarries and La Farge has recently entered into apartnership agreement with WWF (WWF-EARPO 2002).35