Mega Projects and De-commonization: Infrastructure, Land Tenure and Local Institutions Change in a Communal Conservancy in Isiolo, Kenya

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how mega projects transform land tenure and local institutions in the context of a community-based conservation (CBC) model in northern Kenya. The model was introduced in some parts of Africa in the early 1990s to facilitate a win-win strategy for conservation and economic development; through tourism-based economies and enhanced traditional livelihoods (pastoralism). The conservation approach is anchored on Ostrom’s ideas of governing common-pool resources which institutionalizes indigenous systems and customary expressions to promote local communities’ rights to land and nature, as well as their participation for sustainable access, use and management of natural resources. In the last decade, communal conservancy spaces in northern Kenya found within the territories earmarked for ambitious development corridors, have experienced significant changes and emerging controversies. We take the case study of the components of the Lamu Port South-Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor; a mega-infrastructure project connecting Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, as well as other ancillary projects, to understand how they re-organize land tenure and traditional (local) institutions within the Nakuprat Gotu conservancy in Isiolo county. The paper is based on ethnographic data collected in 2022 and it uses the ‘economies of anticipation’ perspective to interpret emerging dynamics related to the competition between development and conservation visions and aspirations on a communally owned landscape. Our findings reveal how the anticipations, hopes, fears, and contestations between these actors has re-defined communal land views, values and tenure system, and local institution arrangements, posing a threat to the future of the region’s conservancy model.