Description
This paper explores justice and equity dimensions in droughts and drought resilience by focusing on the ongoing drought in Lake Naivasha Catchment Area. As one of the agricultural and commercial horticultural hubs of Kenya, Lake Naivasha catchment area is strongly affected by the ongoing droughts. Traditionally known as a water-abundant area in Kenya, recent droughts have led the Lake to recede to a level not seen since the 1940s. For example, it was reported that several streams and rivers feeding the lake had dried up by October 2022. These events impact smallholder farmers, commercial farmers and pastoralist communities unequally, as each has developed different capacities to absorb, adapt to and cope with the ongoing drought. Our fieldwork in the region comprised semi-structured individual and group interviews with representatives of all Water Resource User Associations (WRUAs) of the catchment area. We analyse these data using a conceptual framework that integrates equitable resilience literature with the concept of historical process that is prominent in the environmental justice literature. This enables us to situate local, contemporary inequalities faced by smallholder farmers and pastoralist groups within global and historical processes, such as commercialisation of land, agriculture and natural resources, and development of global supply chains. We show that these processes have systematically marginalised those groups in Kenyan politics, inequitably enhancing their vulnerability to drought and undermining their resilience. Thus, this paper provides a timely empirical and conceptual intervention into the emerging equitable resilience literature by providing a comprehensive account of injustices related to the ongoing droughts in Kenya, while connecting this literature to broader socio-economic and political processes shaping local resilience practices. This processual approach to equitable resilience will enhance analysis of resilience to other disasters.
