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Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic data collected among upstream riparian land users involved in the first "payments for watershed services" programme to be implemented in Kenya to reveal the modalities and stakes of the social construction of the "watershed".

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decades the number of projects labelled "payments for watershed services"(PWS) has increased exponentially. In Kenya, several PWS projects have been developed but most of them failed to go beyond the feasibility or piloting stage. A common feature of these programmes is that they point to the practices of upstream farmers in the degradation of water quality. This paper draws its analysis from empirical data collected in the Naivasha region where Kenya's first PWS project to be implemented is located, as part of a study about the "translation" (Callon 1986) of the PWS concept at the local scale. Interviews were notably conducted in a village upstream of Lake Naivasha water basin over several weeks in 2016. This village was among the ones targeted by the project for the implementation of soil conservation measures as an identified "hotspot" for the provision of "watershed services". Using an ethnographic approach and methods of the French school of comparative agriculture, the influence of the interviewees' involvement in this project on their land/water perceptions was explored. This study shows how the upstream/downstream connections have been highlighted along the project's implementation by its facilitators and local intermediaries, and how the concept of "watershed" was disseminated and reinterpreted locally. These results unravel the discourses influencing the social construction of the "watershed" locally and its political stakes. This calls for a closer mobilization of ethnographic methods in reflections on the "translation" of influential concepts in environmental and water management policies.