Climate change and local indigenous knowledge and practices in Kenya: an analysis of agrarian community responses and their role in formal policy and law-making

Ngang, Eric Ndeh Mboumien (2023). Climate change and local indigenous knowledge and practices in Kenya: an analysis of agrarian community responses and their role in formal policy and law-making. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

In developing countries, agriculture, while providing livelihoods to communities, is adversely affected by climate change. The communities that depend on this sector of activity respond to these adverse impacts by using their local indigenous knowledge and practices (LIKP) to adapt and survive. National climate change policy and law-making is a new and significant issue for integrating diverse knowledge, including the LIKP of communities severely affected and equally responding in their own ways.

Literature on policy and law-making to address environmental disturbances such as climate change that directly impact local communities has given little attention to how to incorporate their LIKP and the barriers to this. There is also little evidence of comprehensive studies on climate change legislative processes and how diverse actors, including state and non-state actors with competing knowledge and different levels of power, interact and shape the outcome of such processes mediated by the institutional arrangements within the policy space.

This is investigated in this research using Kenya as a case study. Kenya enacted the first climate change law and one of the first laws to protect traditional knowledge and cultural expressions in 2016. This follows processes that began in 2008 and interspersed with a new constitution in 2010 introducing a multi-level governance arrangement. This investigation can shed light on how these multi-actors, multi-sector, and multi-level interactions enhance or constrain the incorporation of diverse knowledge, including the LIKP of agrarian communities active in climate change adaptation.

Informed by literature on knowledge, actors, power dynamics, and institutional arrangements, an innovative framework was developed to guide the data collection and analysis to answer the question, ‘How does policy and law-making on climate change enable or constrain the incorporation of LIKP?’. Qualitative data were collected through remote interviews among policy actors at national and sub-national levels in Kenya. This was in addition to a review of secondary data from government publications and other published sources.

The findings suggest that control over knowledge is an essential dimension of power. The low concentration of power facilitated by decentralised institutional arrangements in Kenya's climate change policy environment supports vertical and horizontal interactions amongst policy actors and sectors. This results in policy integration across sectors and the incorporation of LIKP. Agrarian communities were influential policy actors who drew their power from their ability to develop and use their LIKP to understand and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Also, their large numbers constitute a source of political capital, which they have used to promote their LIKP. This knowledge is captured through the bottom-up process in nationwide climate hearings and incorporated into climate change policies and laws. Although LIKP is used in combination or in a complementary manner with scientific knowledge, to a greater extent, scientific knowledge is prioritised due to its ability to respond to the magnitude of climate change compared to LIKP. Scientific knowledge is promoted by other policy actors who are more powerful and occupy influential positions in the policy space. This limits the potential for more incorporation of LIKP climate laws and policies.

This thesis offers extended knowledge on policy and law-making in the novel area of climate change regarding the limited attention to the incorporation of LIKP. It contributes to theoretical knowledge on policy and law-making towards the incorporation of LIKP as well as empirical evidence on national policy and law-making to tackle climate change using Kenya as a case study. In addition, the analytical framework developed by the researcher that brings together three interdependent themes (knowledge, actors, and institutional arrangements) wherein only a few literatures address them together is a contribution made by this study. This Framework could serve as a pragmatic guide for evaluating existing climate change policies and laws or developing new policies.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):