Can the Environment be a Pathway to Peace?
Isiolo County in Northern Kenya is richly colored by its multiplicities of diversities. It is positioned at the intersection where ecology, politics and identity dissect. Unlike many Kenyan counties which tend to be home to one dominant ethnic group, the Turkana, Meru, Mokogodo-Maasai Samburu Gabra, Somali Rendille, Boran and Pokot claim Isiolo County as their home. The residents of Isiolo are primarily pastoralists and this has far reaching implications for the county. This region has been fraught with increased incidents of natural disasters like droughts and floods and by protracted and intermittent violent conflicts over resources. From the Shifta wars of 1963-1967 (a conflict in which ethnic Kenyan Somalis attempted to join their fellow Somalis in greater Somali) to continuing intertribal clashes and skirmishes. Land is closely linked to livelihoods making it a major source of conflict. The paucity of arable land, because of droughts and anthropogenic stresses, has contributed to violence, in the form of insurgencies and ethnic clashes.
The environment in Isiolo has been affected by land-use changes chiefly as a result of once-nomadic pastoralists shifting to sedentary lifestyles. The Turkana of Isiolo are a classic example. Colonial military operations of the 1920s and the failed agricultural schemes of the 1930s pushed them towards sedentism. Later in July 1958, colonial officers expelled thousands of protesting Turkana from Isiolo town in central Kenya and forced them to return to Turkana. In just two generations their way of life was completely overturned. Anthropologist Professor Vigdis Broch-Due recounts that the first displacement out of Turkana and into Isiolo town was to “civilize” them by turning them into farmers. The second one was supposedly to repatriate them out of town and back to the plains into a specialized pastoral system to which they no longer had access, the economic and social links into that world having been cut off generations earlier.
Isiolo was the location of an extensive reconfiguration of rights in land during colonial times, the effects of which are still being felt today. The Laikipia Maasai like the Isiolo Turkana were completely removed. Others, like the Samburu, were pushed to the outer reaches, while the Borana escaped the reshuffle. The space they left was settled by the Somali. Having served as soldiers in the British army during the First World War, the Somali community from Aden and Kismayu was compensated with land. Isiolo also served as a border that separated the white settler community, with its wheat-fields and ranches, from indigenous, nomadic, subsistence herders.
Pastoralism is, in many areas, the only economically viable development option and yet many countries see the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as being linked to limiting the mobility of pastoral peoples. Looking at poverty and environmental degradation only from an economic point of view is very limiting. By making factors such as income, nutrition, and soil erosion the only aspect representing complex social realities, important social and political processes defining and creating poverty and environmental pressures can be misrepresented. As is the case in Isiolo, environmental degradation and resource scarcity and their impact on livelihoods interact in a complex manner with political and economic forces to increase existing Inequalities and create new ones.
Isiolo town is the epicenter of the government of Kenya’s proposed Lamu Port-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project as well as a number of infrastructure investment opportunities in the area, including a resort city, a railroad to Sudan and a road from Lamu to Ethiopia. There are plans to build a mega dam along the Ewaso Ng’iro, river but this is causing a lot of contention in the county and the surrounding areas. The dam is meant to provide water for a proposed resort city to be built in Isiolo as part of Kenya’s vision 2030 development plan. The dam will ease the recurring problem of water scarcity, but on the other hand, floods are also a major challenge in the area. Although the area is mostly arid throughout the year, when the eagerly awaited rain comes they cause more damage than good. The dam would help to thwart the floods by storing excess water and releasing it in controllable measure. It will also help the drought prone region increase food security through irrigation.
The construction of the proposed resort city is also dependent on the dam. Unfortunately, construction of the dam comes with a downside. Damming the river will negatively affect the flow of water downstream putting the wildlife in Samburu national reserve, Shaba and many community conservancies at risk and ultimately the revenue derived from tourism. A reduction in the rate of flow will limit the amount of water reaching communities living farther downstream. Ewaso Ng’iro River is a closed basin making it very fragile in nature. There needs to be more information gathered regarding the hydrological cycles, and how the water volume of the river affects the distribution of the various plants and animals living near the river. This information is vital to the decision making process of the community and stakeholders with regards to the ecological and economic sustainability of the construction of the dam.
In a paradoxical recreation of the colonial scenario, the structural adjustment polices imposed by the World Bank in the 80s and 90s to speed up privatization served to turn nature into a product for sale by ventures such as conservation parks, and bioprospecting ( or in many cases biopiracy). This has not only driven the commodification of nature to the extreme but it has also meant that what used to be common natural resources—firewood, fodder, building materials, berries, game, and sometimes even fields and pastures—have been turned into commodities too. These different definitions of nature interact and influence one another as they enter into the political producing struggles that undergird the flow of resources. A decrease in land quality and availability, lack of access to clean water for livestock all have a detrimental impact on livelihoods and increase inequality, which can breed unrest and conflict.
Anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom introduces us to the notion of environmental conflicts being increasingly a part of African warscapes where the poor are denied decent and dignified lives because their essential physical and mental abilities are limited by hunger, poverty, inequality and exclusion. There needs to be a better understanding of how interethnic and inter-communal conflict threatens the livelihoods of communities and undermine strategies designed to alleviate poverty and promote social well-being.