FAC Working Paper 70. Agriculture and Climate Change in Kenya: Climate Chaos, Policy Dilemmas

Abstract

This paper analyses emerging policy discussions on climate change and agriculture in Kenya. Kenya has been ahead of many other countries in developing a national climate change strategy, and agriculture is one of the key critical sectors of interest. However, there are concerns about whether policy goals may be achieved amidst the actors’ many and diverging interests. This paper sets out to map how these debates are starting to take place in practice, and poses the following questions: what are the arguments, who is promoting them, and what are the implications for Kenya’s agricultural sector? The paper argues that, so far, the lack of policy coherence creates a risk of undermining long term policy goals on climate change and agriculture. To develop greater coherence, the paper posits that there is a need for more joined up policies across government beyond strategies laid out in NCCRS. The new NCCAP (GoK, 2013) provides some directions. Some of the proposed actions in the crops sector include promotion and bulking of drought tolerant traditional high value crops, conservation agriculture and integrated soil fertility management. The priority actions for livestock and pastoralism are fodder banks, price stabilisation mechanisms, livestock diversification, and capacity building. Given that there are already signs that the ways in which food security and carbon funding objectives are pursued seem already to favour some interest groups (i.e. intensive farming over pastoralism and dryland farming), there is a need to ensure there is space for a diversity of perspectives to be heard