Liquid Assets, Institutions, Climate Change and Conflict: The Political Ecology of Water in Maji Moto Group Ranch, Narok South, Kenya A Case Study of Water-Related Conflict in a Maasai Community

Abstract

Contemporary arguments hold that increased resource scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions in Africa will be the cause of many conflicts in the near future. Water scarcity especially is increasingly being linked to global warming, with scientists, academics, and governments from around the globe issuing dire warnings on the aftermath of climate change as they seek to battle this latest ‘threat to humanity’ through various policy interventions. The study site of Maji Moto, Kenya, is experiencing increasing and prolonged droughts as well as increasing water scarcity and water-related conflicts during these dry spells. This study will use a political ecology framework to qualitatively assess the local institutional structures to determine how access to water resources is governed at the study site, and to what extent these socio-political institutions and their embedded power relations contribute to disputes and conflicts at the community level, and whether or not climate change plays a definitive role in the water-related conflicts. Pre-colonial control and management of water was governed by customary law where water governance was closely linked to communal land rights. During colonial times the British dismantled these traditional institutions and centralized resource management and control by imposing a governance system based on individual land rights. The Maasai were moved into Native Reserves where institutionally life continued to be governed by customary law. As such, the British created the conditions for a pluralistic system of land and water governance. Today the pastoralist Maasai institution faces many challenges as the traditional administrative institutions of village elders and age-sets where decisions are based on consensus and reciprocity are slowly replaced by new institutions based on democratic principles and statutory law. The demand for change is not always exogenous and can come from within as well as economic, political, and environmental factors such as population pressure, land tenure, multiple droughts, and trading in a market economy require specific types of institutions to meet these new conditions. As traditional and statutory laws collide, contradictory interests question the legitimacy of the authority of the various institutions, leading to new forms of cooperation and conflict. This study demonstrates that it takes more than a change in the weather to elicit the increased water-related conflicts apparent at the study site and that climate change interventions must be based on the contents and effects of institutions rather than on just their form.