Issue No. 116

Guns, Grazing, and the Climate Crisis in Northern Kenya

One merely has to drive a few miles down the sweltering tarmac road past the town of Isiolo to encounter the Kenyan army. Small Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) checkpoints and outposts litter these roads and others, playing several roles in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) regions. Principal among them is, of course, interdicting the drips and drabs of Al-Shabaab militants infiltrating in small numbers from Somalia. But another prevalent role of past years – particularly since the 2020-2023 drought and ensuing intercommunal violence—has been the army's role in subduing the occurrence of pastoralist-based climate-accentuated conflict.

The accentuated climate crisis —with millions currently at risk from the deepening drought in Kenya —is pouring fuel on the fire of localised conflict across Kenya. With the short rainy season between October and December having delivered just 30 to 60% of the long-term average in much of the country, the humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating, and over 2 million people are facing hunger. Reports of livestock dying and water dwindling are already accentuating intercommunal tensions in the ASALs territories. More broadly, though, the complex, intersecting combination of lengthy droughts and increasingly unpredictable weather, high unemployment, boundary disputes, accessibility of small arms, rising sedentary settlement, and political competition is all feeding into the developing inter-communal conflict.

In particular, the rising scarcity of arable land is pushing neighbouring communities into ever-greater competition, compelling pastoralists to shift traditional migratory patterns and routes. There is a litany of such examples, such as east of Lake Turakana, where conflicts typically intensify in the dry season between Samburu and Turkana herders, with pastoralists from the Turkana routinely seeking access to the Mt. Kulai pastures claimed by the Samburu. But these kinds of disputes permeate a host of other counties, including Kapeda, Mukutan, Muchongoi, Ol Moran, and Lakipia, to name but a few. 

Furthermore, the decline of traditional governance in the past decades has seen a simultaneous accentuation of the roles of politicians and others, including those who have weaponised contestation over land and livestock by mobilising ethnicity. Violence in ASAL areas of Kenya has surged —or declined —as part of national political developments, and with general elections fast approaching in 2027, such intensified land competition and politicised identity may well return to the forefront. Nor is such competition limited to a wholly domestic issue. In the disputed Ilemi Triangle in the north of Turkana County, clashes between the Toposa of South Sudan and the Turkana of Kenya have become increasingly commonplace, for instance.

Learning from the experiences of the drought and instability, Kenya has steadily emerged at the forefront of tying climate change to the concept of national security, debuting its National Climate Change Security Response (NCCSR) last year. The model centres on a holistic approach, seeking to support grassroots climate resilience work by incorporating security actors —particularly the police and army. Moreover, Nairobi has also recognised climate change as a national security threat, including by listing it as the 5th threat to national security and integrating it into the National Climate Change Action Plan III. This plan directly ties climate impact, be it drought or flooding, with livelihoods and conflict, with these frameworks more broadly seeking anticipatory risk management. In this regard, Nairobi is at the forefront of examining the fraught, complex interplay between security (or its lack) and a deteriorating environment.
But securitisation also risks reshaping bureaucratic power and prioritising by amplifying the role of defence institutions and diminishing the slower-moving civilian processes such as land reform.

With persistent insecurity, it is little wonder that Nairobi has once again turned to a militarised response for the nation's peripheries, one of the principal tools remaining in its arsenal despite years of nominal decentralisation. But the extent to which security forces are increasingly authorised to participate in alleviating the climate-security challenges is notable. Two principal initiatives are dictating how interventions are undertaken-- the Greening Kenya initiative and the Environmental Soldier Programme, both typically steered by the NCCSR. The first facilitates the military in contributing to reforestation efforts, particularly in areas subject to persistent intercommunal violent conflict. The Environmental Soldier Programme, meanwhile, similarly focuses on conservation, with soldiers deployed to support ecosystem restoration.

Such programmes illustrate how the military is gradually assuming the role of under-resourced local institutions. Beyond these programmes, though, KDF patrols and collaborative monitoring are increasingly designed to prevent livestock theft, allowing pastoral communities to sustain their seasonal migratory patterns. Another role of the KDF is to protect critical water infrastructure, including boreholes, which often serve as focal points of conflict during drought periods in the drier areas of Wajir, Turkana and Marsabit. Even so, there is no panacea for the deep-set inter-communal disputes plaguing, and a military solution can help dampen the violence, but cannot cure its roots. And in some areas, prolonged security deployments have also reshaped local political economies, disrupting established patterns of raiding and protection while inadvertently creating new forms of dependency on armed actors for stability.

Further, the role of militaries in the climate-security nexus remains contentious amongst policymakers. For some, it represents a climb-down from a locally-centred approach, liable to foment distrust between local communities and security forces if mishandled. Historical injustices permeate these regions, and the hand of a centralised state does not hold much love in the marginalised areas of Northeast Kenya and the coast. The securitisation of these regions is a complex, multifaceted issue, harking back to some of the grimmer legacies of 20th-century Kenya, not least the treatment of pastoralists as second-class citizens. Particularly, colonial histories of restricting movement to reduce intercommunal conflict between predominantly ethnic Somali clans in the Northeast hang heavy as well.

But despite all this, in Kenya's arid regions, the presence of the KDF has often been crucial in limiting the outbreak of conflict over scant resources. In one significant intervention, Operation Maliza Uhalifu in 2023 saw KDF and the National Police Service attempt to root out banditry in the North Rift region, targeting the so-called 'Conflict Belt' of the Suguta Valley, Malaso Escarpment, Keiyo Valley, and Turkwel River belt. Alongside the operations, the Kenyan government overhauled the National Police Reserve (NPR), an auxiliary force under the police composed of local volunteers and armed by the state. The NPR have sought to supplement security in territories where issues of cattle rustling and banditry persist. Moreover, Operation Maliza Uhalifu critically sought to incorporate administrative and educational dimensions, establishing dozens of new units across Baringo, Samburu, Meru, and other counties. And perhaps most notably, the military led the rehabilitation of cattle raiders.

Yet perhaps the deeper question is not whether security forces have a role in Kenya's climate-stressed peripheries; plainly, they do. In many cases, the KDF and police presence can prevent localised disputes from spiralling into far deadlier confrontations seen in South Sudan and Somalia. But rather, the more complex issue pertains to when climate adaptation is increasingly securitised, with force projection preferred over governance. And while security force deployment can diminish violence, it rarely solves the disputes that underpin it, and can indeed freeze conflicts in place without settling grazing rights or reconstituting the necessary local institutions that mediate seasonal movement. Furthermore, with international support dwindling, the temptation to reach for the domestic coercive tools at hand may only grow. Funding for land adjudication or livelihood diversification is rapidly drying up from traditional donors, and it is yet to be seen whether Nairobi is willing —or able —to step into the void in the peripheries of the state.

Kenya may be at the forefront of recognising the climate–security nexus. The challenge now is ensuring that security remains part, not the whole, of understanding climate resilience.

​The Horn Edition Team