Non-elite Environmentalisms in a Global Context: Olderkesi and Narok, Kenya: Report on Fieldwork and Stakeholder Engagement Workshop, October 2019

Abstract

We are in a moment of profound environmental change, which presents challenges at local (water and food security), regional (land security) and global scales (climate change). Rural parts of Kenya have undergone substantial changes in recent years. Water resources and communities are under pressure from agriculture, industry and land management challenges like conservation, deforestation and soil degradation. Institution-led development and environmental efforts - whether addressing food security, nutrition, conservation or climate change adaptation - can sometimes compete or run counter to each other.
With funding from the University of Southampton and a partnership with the Technical University of Kenya, an interdisciplinary research team came together to think about these institution-led (elite) development efforts and how they interact with the realities of (non-elite) communities in areas like Olderkesi in Narok County, Kenya. This short project will enable us to scope for a larger proposal next year that will bring together different partners and stakeholders. The team is made up of Dr. Emma Roe, Dr. Luke Olang’, Dr. Francis Oloo, Dr. Paul Hurley and Sospeter Wekesa, who bring together experience and knowledge across university and non-university settings.
The team undertook two days of visiting communities and projects in the Olderkesi area, and held a workshop in Narok town with stakeholders from communities, government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). We say ‘environmentalisms’ in the plural because it isn’t one single thing, and we wanted to find out what ‘non-elite environmentalisms’ might be in this local context. They might be what communities are doing for themselves, from traditional indigenous ways of living or from newer innovations responding to environmental and social change. They might be things that people are doing within their own family or what they are doing as a wider community.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Paul Hurley: orcid.org/0000-0002-8964-5774

ORCID for Emma Roe: orcid.org/0000-0003-4674-2133

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