Ensuring devolution supports adaptation and climate resilient growth in Kenya

Effective governance of natural resources is crucial for adaptive capacity and climate resilient growth — and nowhere more so than in Kenya’s arid and semiarid lands. Climate change will hit dryland communities and economies early and severely because it exacerbates existing structural causes of poverty and inequality. Poor governance and exclusion of local voices (particularly from planning and management of natural resources) has eroded dryland communities’ distinctive capacity to adapt. But building on Kenya’s new constitution, a devolved Climate Adaptation Fund is being piloted in Isiolo County. It puts local priorities at the heart of the development agenda, and can integrate local adaptive strategies and innovations into national policy, providing insights that could also help reform development planning systems in other drylands.