Before starting my fellowship at CPIK, I had the opportunity to research conflict among pastoralist groups in central and East Africa. For example, I compiled a case study on farmer-herder conflict in the Middle Belt of Nigeria. I also spoke to my professors about how climate change relates to the uptick in violence over the past few decades among pastoralist groups in northern Kenya, including those whom CPIK works directly with, like the Pokot. As academics should, I came away with more questions than answers—and I bring them into my fellowship.

I am curious about the international community’s narrative that climate change is the driving cause of conflict, particularly over the last decade. In fact, billions of dollars in externally-designed “climate resilience” interventions have not seemed to meet the needs of these tribes, evidenced by a humanitarian crisis in the midst of a four year drought. Indeed, former peace fellow Julia Holladay noted the alternative, research-driven narrative—that climate change exacerbates conflict but does not directly cause it. To elaborate, environmental fluctuations have been a reality that pastoralists have dealt with, and adapted to, for millennia. While the planet is currently heating up at an unprecedented rate, which contributes to irregular rainfall and increased temperatures, pastoralist groups have historically managed despite various periods of floods and droughts through using indigenous knowledge.

Furthermore, inter-tribal violence is not inevitable. This University of Sussex study examined the historic “moral economy” of pastoralists in Kenya’s Isiolo County. It found that over the past 45 years, tribes relied on “redistribution, comradeship, diversification, and collective response to protect the livelihoods from external threats.” Referencing the two tribes we will work with this summer—the Pokot and Il Chamus—I am curious whether they historically maintained a social environment that managed conflict and exercised interdependence.

So, perhaps one of the main questions for me to explore this summer is, IF the Pokots and Il Chamus have experienced peace in the past despite environmental fluctuations, then what has changed? What are the additional complicating factors besides climate change that has caused violence? What are we missing here, and what should be part of future interventions?

To address these questions, I am excited to be working with CPI, which has worked for 13 years to prioritize localized interventions and does so by developing authentic relationships with children, warriors, and elders. The “fora outreach” camps this summer will quite literally meet the tribes where they are (in the fora) to discuss pastoralists’ personal experiences with the eroding grazable land and drying watering holes. And these testimonies will inform CPI’s interventions. I’m looking forward to exploring this “bottom-up” approach to mitigating pastoralist conflict. As I enter the next three weeks of fieldwork, I ask the following questions: (1) How can we at CPI balance our targeted work on climate change, while recognizing the multi-faceted nature of this conflict—which involves the influx of small and light arms weapons, ineffective policing, and/ or corrupt governance?  (2) What are ways that CPIK programming can empower warriors, who may feel that their source of prestige and income (acquiring cows) is being threatened? (3) Within the tribes themselves, are there men who are not fighting? Why? What are their relationships with those who are? And critically, how are women and children valued?

I have more questions, but there are eight more blogs for that, and I presume I’ll be using at least some of that airtime with answers. In the meantime, I’d like to give kudos to the CPI team for participating in the GIZ Conference for Peace this week in Nairobi. CPI showcased our work amongst a large group of other local peacebuilding NGO’s in a jam-packed but exciting two day event.

Purity Karimi, CPI Finance Manager, discusses our mission to a conference participant

Hilary Bukuno and Monica Kinyua proudly represent CPI