Serengeti National Park

• Potential impacts of a hydro-electric project in Kenya
• Reduced and degraded water resources
• Water infrastructure
• Potential impact of optical cables’ installation
• Air transport infrastructure
• Ground transport infrastructure
• Illegal activities, including poaching
• Tourism infrastructure

N/A

On 24 February 2024, the State Party submitted a report on the state of conservation of the property, available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/156/documents/, which provides the following information:

• During the joint World Heritage Centre/IUCN Reactive Monitoring mission, which visited the property from 15 to 19 January 2024, the State Party of Kenya representative has confirmed that the proposal for dams on the Mara river was developed by NELSAP but that no further discussion and commitments have been made to implement these projects;
• The development of a Joint Water Allocation Plan (JWAP) for the Mara basin between Tanzania and Kenya will be coordinated through the Lake Victoria Basin Commission Secretariat of the East African Community;
• The inclusion of the Speke Gulf into Serengeti National Park has been approved and a programme of voluntary relocation of the affected communities with compensation based on Tanzanian laws is underway. A boundary modification request will be submitted thereafter;
• Confirmation that the stretch of the northern road traversing the property from Tabora B to Klein’s Gate will remain under the management of Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) and maintained as a gravel road for tourism and administrative duties;
• The proposed golf course at Fort Ikoma has been subject to a full Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and will be submitted to the World Heritage Centre after certification;
• All tourism accommodation facilities in the property have been strategically planned and implemented following the General Management Plan (GMP).

On 6 December 2023, the World Heritage Centre sent a letter to the State Party of Kenya informing them about the planned joint Reactive Monitoring mission in January 2024 and requesting an official update on the status of the dam projects on the Mara river. To date, no official written response was received.

The Reactive Monitoring mission concluded that the different attributes which underpin the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property are being maintained and that the State Party should be commended for the important efforts it has undertaken in implementing the 2010 Reactive Monitoring mission recommendations. The “northern road” project, which constituted a major threat to the OUV of the property, has been abandoned and the southern bypass is under construction. The addition of the Speke Gulf area, providing wildlife access to the permanent water source of Lake Victoria is underway. Both initiatives require substantial investments, which are entirely born by the national budget, and indicate the commitment of the State Party to the conservation of the property. The 2024 mission report further welcomed the significant work undertaken since 2010 to strengthen law enforcement, address human wildlife conflicts, control and manage invasive alien species, and develop a clear strategy for the management of fires. While noting efforts to further improve engagement with local communities, the importance of ensuring a participatory human rights-based approach for the protection and management of the property in line with international best practice standards, needs to be further stressed. This is particularly important in relation to the voluntary resettlement of communities in the Speke Gulf area that is proposed for inclusion into the national park.

Despite these positive developments, the mission expressed concern about the long-term integrity of the property, which is dependent on the ecological health of the wider transboundary landscape of the Greater Serengeti Mara Ecosystem (GSME), which extends into Kenya. Recent research clearly documents that the pressure on the natural resources in and around the GSME has increased substantially over the past decades, resulting in edge effects and spatial compression of wildlife across the GSME. To address these increasing external pressures on the GSME, transboundary management strategies need to be developed and transboundary cooperation improved between the two States Parties. In the Tanzanian part of the GSME, the coordination between the different agencies responsible for the protected areas also needs to be increased.

The mission was especially concerned by changes in the hydrology of the transboundary Mara River due to catchment degradation and water abstraction. The Mara River provides crucial access to water for migrating herbivores during the dry periods, within a large area, providing ample and available grassland. The mission concluded that the potential construction of a series of upstream dams in Kenya would inevitably result in significant modifications of the Mara River flow and could potentially have devastating impacts on the OUV of the property. This includes the risk of significant mortality of large numbers of wildebeest and other herbivores in years of drought, and possible collapse of the migration if such drought periods occurred over several consecutive years. While at this stage, there appear to be no plans to proceed with the proposed dam projects, it is recommended that the Committee request again the State Party of Kenya to officially confirm this. The proposed joint water allocation plan for the transboundary Mara River needs to be developed urgently to ensure Minimum Environmental Flows as established by the Environmental Flows Assessment.

The mission also expressed concerns about the growing impacts of tourism inside the property. While noting the information that tourism infrastructure is strategically planned and implemented following the GMP, the proposed growth of tourism facilities foresees increasing the number of lodges by 250% and permanent tented camps by 300%, and expanding the footprint of human use across the property. The mission considered that the large, planned increase in tourism facilities, including in the low use and wilderness zone is of serious concern, given the increasing evidence that the current tourism footprint is already starting to impact the OUV of the property. It is recommended that the revision of the GMP and decisions on future tourism development should be informed by the best available science in order to revise the management zones and permissible use in these zones. This should include setting measurable and monitorable limits of acceptable change, particularly in the behavior, demographics and population of the migrating wildebeest, zebra and gazelle. The mission considers that, given the fact that the wildebeest migration is central to the OUV of the property, the acceptable limit of change in these aspects of the wildebeest population should be ‘zero change’.

The mission further noted with concern that the proposed golf development at Fort Ikoma is likely to create a new obstacle for the herbivore migration in an area where the migration corridor is already under pressure from increasing development in the Serengeti district and concluded that the EIA has not adequately assessed the potential impact of the proposed project on the migration, and that this project should not proceed at the present time. The EIA requires revision to align with the necessary World Heritage standards, including a comprehensive assessment of impacts on migration, and the evaluation of alternative locations prior to any further decision on this project.

In order to address the above-mentioned challenges and to avoid that the OUV of the property would be jeopardized, the mission proposed several further recommendations on current development proposals and approaches, of which the most important ones have been included in the draft Decision below.