Ikal Angelei

Ikal Angelei is a Kenyan politician and environmentalist. She was born in Kitale. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2012.

Quotes

• People always say, “Oh, we are controlling the flooding.” But you cannot alter nature; you cannot fight nature… Lake Turkana doesn’t have an outlet; it is a closed lake. So it depends on that balance of inflow versus evaporation. If you reduce that inflow, the level of evaporation increases. Once you have altered the balance of the lake, you have damaged the ecosystem completely.
• The same [threat] exists in Ethiopia — we cannot ignore that this is an area where communities are also struggling for resources. The communities live a way of life that is like a typical African three-legged stool. They depend on subsistence farming; they depend on fishing; and they depend on pastoralism. If you reduce the floods, it damages their subsistence farming, which is very key to their normal way of life… If you remove one leg, the stool really cannot balance.
• You cannot say ‘development’ is telling people that your way of life doesn’t work anymore,Yes, I think it is a human rights abuse and an environmental abuse.
• There’s conflict between the Turkana and Dassanach in Kenya, and the Turkana and the Dassanach across the border… People used to talk about traditional raids. It’s no longer that. People are now well armed and it depends on who has more bullets than the other.There’s absolutely no way that dam can go on and the people in Turkana will survive.
  • A Kenyan Woman Stands Up Against Massive Dam Project YaleEnvironment 360,25 April 2012 by Christina M. Russo