Issue No. 15

What Went Unsaid: Kenya at COP28

Kenyan delegates attended this year's Conference of the Parties (COP) in Dubai with much at stake. Severe El Nino-related flooding in Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, and Tana River counties has recently displaced more than 136,000 people. Rising sea levels threaten coastal counties and the city of Mombasa, which already faces freshwater supply and salinisation challenges. And small subsistence farms - and the women that largely cultivate them - could face lower agricultural yields as temperatures rise and water supplies fall.

Kenyan delegates highlighted these struggles alongside discussions of funding for 'loss and damages.' Noticeably absent from COP discourse, however, was climate's role in stoking many of Kenya's internal, cross-county conflicts over scarce natural resources. The causal links between climate and conflict are tenuous, and academic literature leans towards climate more often being one of many factors stirring conflict. This is indeed the case for Kenya-- intercounty disputes are highly politicised and aren't a new phenomenon. Still, a growing number of the country's intercounty border disputes have climate and resource-based components should not have been overlooked at this year's COP. Kenya's experience should act as a cautionary tale about the necessity of proper resource management and effective conflict resolution in the face of intensifying climate threats.

County divisions along ethnic and sub-ethnic lines have created ripe conditions for resource-based disputes. When these disputes turn violent, it is often because perpetrators see resource accumulation in zero-sum terms. Wafula Okumu, Executive Director of The Borders Institute, and Paul Kibiwott, former Commissioner for Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, point to more than 40 ongoing border disputes between counties in no small part because of "mismanagement of intercounty resources."

These dangerous overlaps between ethno-political interests and deteriorating climate conditions have aggravated intercounty violence stretching from coastal counties to Lake Victoria. Incidents have occurred along the border of Garissa and Tana River, Kisumu and Kericho, Isiolo and Meru, Turkana and Samburu, among others. The fighting can be characterised as armed ethnic clashes over territorial claims, cattle raiding, and targeted attacks against civilians and infrastructure.

Climate's role in inciting this cross-border violence comes in largely two forms. The first centres on climate-induced mobility and migration. Resource-dependent pastoralists moving their livestock to new grazing areas amidst uncertain climatic conditions often do so onto sedentary farmlands or the historical grazing lands of other ethnic groups. While moving livestock, Orma pastoralists in Tana River County, for example, have been reported to clash with Pokomo agro-pastoralists. Likewise, Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana pastoralists migrating to Laikipia County for grazing land have increasingly engaged in violent and retaliatory cattle rustling.

The second form includes the politicisation of territorial boundaries, land grabbing, and resource access. Alongside common criminals, politicians often co-opt cross-border violence for personal benefit. They may use their office to authorise favourable resource extraction rights for themselves or their allies, or strategically campaign on narratives villainising 'rival' ethnic groups for 'stealing' their constituent's rightful land. Neither strategy addresses issues of resource scarcity – it only approaches the problem with a harmful winner-take-all solution.

This need not be the case. A government-backed plan to rehabilitate and expand the Cheparkule Water Pan intends to mitigate violent clashes between the Turkana and Pokot. Dubbed a "peace dam," the project's managing director, Sammy Naporos, said, "We shall no longer have conflicts and clashes because of resource-based feuding and water scarcity… We want to end competition over shared resources." Member of Parliament Peter Lochakapong has made equally confident statements about the project's potential to restore peace between the two counties.

Apart from infrastructure development, county-led efforts have proved to be successful contributions towards peacebuilding. In a recent cattle rustling dispute between Migori and Narok Counties, local elders and ad-hoc peace committees invoked the local Awendo and Tarime Peace Accords as frameworks for peace. In the same vein, members of Babukusu, Iteso, and Sabaot communities across Western Kenya rely on the Mabanga Peace Accord to demarcate land, reduce tribal politics, and ensure equal distribution of county resources and political power.

Climate's role in generating Kenya's cross-border disputes had little chance of being raised in Dubai - Kenyan delegates were far more concerned with securing financing for a loss and damages fund, and in any case, they would have been cautious about discussing the politicisation of violent conflicts. That does not mean the issue has gone overlooked in Kenya itself though. At both the county and national levels, there have clearly been creative attempts to prevent and resolve resource-based challenges. It is exactly these attempts, and the consequences of ignoring them, that should attract attention at future COPs and other climate-centered forums.

By the Horn Edition team