Paper short abstract:

Biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation tend to be studied separately. We investigate the relationship between community-based conservation and pastoralists' climate change adaptation in northern Kenya. Results demonstrate the contradictory and contested nature of adaptation.

Paper long abstract:

There is now significant critical scholarship on the ‘green-grabbing’ phenomenon. However, the implication of ‘green-grabbing’ on communities’ climate change adaptation remains underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by investigating three interrelated issues with a particular focus on pastoralist communities in Samburu County of Kenya. First, the role of ‘climate politics’ in shaping Community-based Conservation -led climate change adaptation and second, perceptions and experiences of pastoralists on Community-based Conservation-led climate change adaptation. Conceptually, the paper builds on the idea of ‘climate politics’; the formal and informal dynamics with the potential to set and shape the meanings of climate change, its causes, consequences, and response to climate change. We find that Community-based Conservation imperatives occupied a notable space in efforts to strengthen pastoralists’ climate change adaptation. However, pastoralists are generally pessimistic about the potential for Community-based Conservation-led climate change adaptation. Nonetheless, they see Community-based Conservation as a route to improved rangelands health, increased income from tourism, enhanced access to formal education, and mitigation of inter-ethnic conflicts. These results demonstrate the contradictory nature of climate change adaptation and show how, in contexts of historically marginalized, highly vulnerable but transitioning communities such as pastoralists, ‘green grabbing' hinders climate and agrarian justice but may also result in adaptation strategies that are promising and that is valuable to the marginal population.

Paper short abstract:

I investigate how community conservancies in northern Kenya engage in a variety of security practices beyond conservation, or ‘green security’, by examining how two types of ranger practices establish conservancies as a central security force by complementing and substituting Kenya’s police.

Paper long abstract:

Multiple incompatible ideas shape the contentious debate on how to conserve nature in and for the future. Among those, people-centred conservation approaches are long engaged as the future of conservation. These approaches are usually contrasted to and were developed to counteract social injustices produced by coercive fortress-style conservation. This paper investigates how community conservancies in northern Kenya nevertheless engage in a variety of militarised security practices beyond conservation, which I call ‘green security’. I explain why, although community-based conservation might seem incompatible with ‘green militarisation’ at first sight, it perpetuates militarised ‘green security’ logics. I do so by examining how two types of ranger green security practices establish conservancies as a central security force by complementing and substituting Kenya’s security sector. The article draws on data from two fieldwork trips in Samburu in 2020 and 2022 and a document analysis. The green security practices result in a distinct shift of power relations and ‘statisation’ in the region because conservancies reorganise state-socio-ecological orders and produce the state as ‘an effect’. The paper, finally, argues that the future of conservation, despite the unresolved debates, remains one underpinned by green security logics, particularly in historical marginalised areas with limited state presence.

Paper short abstract:

Baringo County is endowed with crucial assets for future conservation. This article argues that the coexistence of future conservation work and other land uses in the County will depend on the contemporary shifts in the inter-generational aspirations and values of communities living in the County.

Paper long abstract:

Baringo County has a vast land mass in Kenya with a high potential for conservation. In 2017, the Kenya Wildlife Conservation Association (KWCA) in conjunction with the Baringo County Conservancies Association (BCCA) mapped seven hotspots with a potential to establish new wildlife conservancies. The mapping was informed by the rich natural, environmental and cultural assets, which have been strongly intertwined with the communities’ dominant pastoral livelihood for decades. Similarly, the livelihood has been coexisting with conservation. These notions are reflected in the County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) that presents conservation as a potential, viable and sustainable source of livelihoods for the communities. However, modern youth are fascinated by globalisation, technology and artificial intelligence that shape their perspectives, dreams, and aspirations. Future conservation plans must thus be contextualized in the intergenerational differences and the emerging contemporary socioeconomic and technological dynamics. Therefore, the article applies a survey design to investigate the following questions; (1) How do conservation thoughts change between generations? (2) What transformation is envisaged in the planned establishment of new community conservancies? (3) Will the future conservation (non) coexist with other livelihoods and land uses?

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses conservation as a political leverage for local stakeholders in the negotiation of new futures. It shows that the struggle of the Lembus community for forest conservation in Baringo, Kenya, motivates and legitimizes their demand for rights and voice in forest management.

Paper long abstract:

“The Lembus Forest is being mismanaged because the people brought from outside (for political reasons) do not care about the trees, the soil erosion, the water sources, the medicinal trees, etc.” These words were written by the Lembus Council of Elders to the Kenya Ministry of Environment and Forestry in March 2018 to request a more sustainable and inclusive management of their ancestral forests. This contribution examines conservation as a way for local stakeholders to negotiate the future of the forest and of their own community. The forest that the Lembus people (a Kalenjin subgroup) still call the “Lembus Forest” was put under governmental management and used for commercial timber exploitation from the 1910s, under the colonial regime in Kenya. Although local forest dwellers, of which mainly Lembus people, were recognized rights to live there, after Kenya’s independence, they were relocated in areas freed from the forest land, while the forests remained in governmental hands. In 2019, members of the Lembus community, under the lead of the Lembus Council of Elders, were contesting a governmental forest management which, they argued, focused on exploitation and neglected the conservation of the local forests. Claiming their ancestral ownership and their cultural link to the forest, they mobilized conservationist arguments to request a say in forest management and benefits from forest utilization. This contribution highlights the (re-)appropriation of conservation by Lembus stakeholders as a political leverage to counter the historical injustice of colonial and postcolonial forest management, and to negotiate new futures.

Paper long abstract:

In Kenya, communities have been supported mainly by the State and NGOs to convert their communally held land into conservation areas called conservancies. The incentive is for communities to draw direct financial benefits from conservation-related businesses. Critical scholarship show that the economic outcomes of conservancies is hardly achieved. How can we then explain the continued State and NGO support to and community acceptance of existence of conservancies and support their expansion?

I draw from fieldwork in Maasai conservancies in the Amboseli conservation area in southwestern Kenya to show that the continued existence and expansion of conservancies is motivated by two interdependent narratives hinging on land tenure transformations in the area. After land subdivision, conservancies remain the only hope to protect wildlife migratory corridors and dispersal areas from agricultural expansion and settlements. Pastoral Maasai are motivated to maintain and expand conservancies to avert land sale to prevent future Maasai landlessness and protect communal livestock grazing areas for the continuity of pastoralism. My analysis suggests that a holistic evaluation conservancy benefits in Kenya must go beyond financial gains, taking sociocultural and ecological benefits into account as well. I conclude that policies and practices that promote conservancies should attune themselves to a new narrative that lay emphasis on protection of land and pastoralism as well as the recognition that communities remain vital for the future of conservation of wildlife.