Unraveling complexity: Understanding the land-water-food nexus in Elgeyo-Marakwet, north-west Kenya

The communities of Elgeyo-Marakwet, northwest Kenya reside across the ecological continuum of the temperate Cherangany Hills and arid Kerio Valley. Heavily reliant on the land-water-food nexus, they offer a well-studied example of resilience in the face of multiple environmental changes over the last 200 years (Davies and Moore 2016). Earlier research by the PI, CoI and team has focused on management of water through a network of built water channels used for agricultural and domestic purposes; the sophisticated management of agricultural soils through complex patterns of tenure and fallowing; management of botanic resources including diverse indigenous and imported crops; and the importance of forests which serve hydraulic functions and as reserves of gathered medicines and foodstuffs.

However, recent work indicates growing apprehension of the impact of new ecological changes, including general concerns over climate change, as well as a shift towards water-intensive mono-cropping, the introduction of new crops, and the installation of piped-irrigation which is exacerbating unequal access to water resources. While these latter changes were meant to help mitigate food insecurity, research suggest that they may have had the opposite effect by increasing soil degradation, introducing unfamiliar weeds and crop diseases, and placing pressure on existing water sources. Related to this are concerns about the loss of traditional natural resource management, the loss of culturally valuable biodiversity, and the implications for food security. Compounding these tensions are land-use changes within the Cherangany Forest catchment, especially deforestation resulting from increased agricultural and pastoral activities. This has raised concerns of fertilizer runoff, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and decreased water quality and quantity across the upland-valley ecological continuum.

There is pressing interest among local communities and the County government, to understand the implications of these new challenges and develop practical solutions. We focus on disentangling the complex and interdependent land-water-food nexus across the Cherangany Forest reserve and the semi-arid Kerio Valley. Using ethnography, interviews, botanic survey, aerial photography, GIS mapping and building on existing collaborative strengths, we will effect these aims along two axes: 1. Forest Management and 2. Agriculture. We will collate, review and extend existing data to understand the land-water-food nexus in relation to both historic and potential future environmental changes. We will also examine existing literature on regional climatic change and collate local weather station data to produce a practical understanding of how these key axes (forests and agriculture) have and may respond to climatic fluctuation. Production of more highly resolved analyses of potential climate induced impacts seems especially important since current predictions for Eastern Africa are spatially heterogeneous and often of low certainty.

To produce localized and grounded knowledge for practical policy making we will partner with Elgeyo-Marakwet County Council, nearby Eldoret University (UOE), the Marakwet Research Station (MRS), British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), National Museums of Kenya (NMK) and Kenya Forestry Service (KFS) to produce research to be directly incorporated into new county-level environmental and conservation planning. We have undertaken preliminary meetings with County officials and established MOU's with UOE and MRS. This work will advance longer-term goals of developing local research capacity, encouraging appropriate resource management, and devising policy frameworks that track and address emerging climate change and other ecological impacts by bringing together experts, civil society, and policy makers.

Davies, M.I.J and Moore, H.L. 2016. Landscape, time and cultural resilience. Journal of Eastern African Studies 10:67-87

From inception to completion (and as a building block for future research), this project aims to generate important new findings pertaining to the complex relationships between climate, land, water and food in a vulnerable part of rural Africa. We aim to tease apart the connectedness of different ecological zones and their reciprocal impacts on human resource security, and will do so at high spatial resolution - moving beyond larger scale ecological and climatic models and towards region and community specific analyses.

Our primary aim is to generate knowledge that creates direct social, economic and resource security benefits for the Elgeyo-Marakwet study community. We will achieve this by working directly with the local County Government of Elegyo-Marakwet and Community Business organisations to develop appropriate resource management plans for a sustainable future. We will disseminate and apply our work through a range of policy papers and community workshops, and we will create a range of resources for local needs. These will include local hardcopy and digital data-stores and online resources accessible to government and community organisations (including reports, blog posts, images, audio-visual). The local community will be directly affected by the implementation of good environmental policy by the County Government, but they will also benefit from access to considerable new knowledge and resources with which to implement their own effective management strategies and for use in their negations with outside managers and policy makers (NGOs etc).

As a secondary impact we will also support planners in the Elgeyo-Marakwet County Government in the enactment of their roles. Kenya has recently transitioned to a devolved structure of County Government, allowing local planners considerable control over the management of regional resources. However, there is a dearth of detailed local knowledge on which to base contextually specific planning decisions including in relations to questions of forest management, agricultural development and climate change mitigation. We will work directly with local planners to establish the inter-connectivity of these changes, producing research data to fill these knowledge gaps and develop future resource management strategies through a series of co-produced policy papers.

Academic beneficiaries include both local and international scholars. We will work in partnership with colleagues from the University of Eldoret, Kenya. Helping them to develop research networks and capacity. We will also produce a range of high resolution environmental records of considerable comparative interest to other UK and European research projects in the immediate region. We also aim to demonstrate an approach aligned with local community and government interests which may be of significant benefit to future academic research trajectories. Regional botanic collections will also be established as both local and national resources at the University of Eldoret and the National Herbarium at the National Museums of Kenya. These will archive unique plant genetic diversity for future research, conservation and teaching purposes and contributing to stores of knowledge of national and wider significance.

Finally, the UK currently spends considerable sums on climatic, environmental, agricultural and other related aid projects in sub-Saharan Africa and we aim to positively impact the effectiveness of these UK development interventions by promoting locally engaged and contextually specific research. Through the UCL IGP, the Nexus Network and DFID contacts we will disseminate our findings and approach through UK policy circles.