Civil society roles in advancing locally owned climate action – the case of Kenya

• In Event: NGOs and CSOs in climate adaptation

Abstract

This paper explores the roles of civil society organizations in Kenya involved in advancing locally-owned climate action, through an internationally funded programme. It zooms in on three questions: From what perspectives on local ownership do organizations work? Involving what understandings of climate change? Contributing to what types of climate action?
The rationale for this study is twofold: first, the theme of climate change is one that many civil society organizations have moved into, while having little background in it, and having mandates resting on other sources of legitimacy. While action is urgent, we can expect organizations to struggle with translation of climate change into themes, approaches and actions that can work for them. Research into roles of CSOs in climate change (e.g. Kagan & Dodge, 2021) so far does not consider this. Second, what local ownership means in the context of climate, with CSOs involved needing to engage with multiple legitimacy audiences (Kontinen and …) and working within specific political and policy contexts, deserves close attention.
The study is interpretive, identifying patterns across a wide range of Kenya-based CSOs, working on various subthemes and from varied approaches, capacities, understandings, priorities and regional focus. The study is based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. Data collection took place in 2022 and 2023.
The organizations’ diversity provides opportunities to shed light on how climate change is understood and approached in diverse Kenyan contexts and from varied organizational perspectives. The same diversity facilitates identifying the spectrum of ways in which the ‘the local’ (cf. Mac Ginty 2015, Van Wessel et al. 2023) is constructed and applied by organizations in the context of advancing local ownership of climate action in Kenya.
Key findings of the study are that contextually embedded understandings of climate change, the local, and local ownership are closely intertwined and embedded in organizational approaches, and result in a remarkable similarity of approaches, notwithstanding organizational diversity. ‘The local’ and ‘locally led solutions’ are commonly understood in terms of facilitation and inclusion of understandings of climate problems and solutions as understood and identified by local communities that organizations work with, with organizations commonly focusing on the facilitation thereof in ongoing climate policy processes. While this acknowledges and seeks to facilitate inclusion of local knowledge in ongoing policy processes in Kenya, it also places responsibility for climate solutions with local communities, and avoids challenging questions addressing climate beyond the local, rarely involves a weighing of solutions based on wider sources of knowledge, and often avoids asking difficult and politically more sensitive questions that could involve confrontation. Furthermore, working with local understandings of climate change, local climate solutions integrate varied locally relevant environmental and natural resource management questions, rather than climate alone. The paper concludes with reflections on the implications of the findings for the wider debate on CSO roles in locally-led climate action.

References

Kagan, J. A., & Dodge, J. (2023). The third sector and climate change: A literature review and agenda for future research and action. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 52(4), 871-891.

Kontinen, T., & Nguyahambi, A. M. (2023). Negotiating CSO Legitimacy in Tanzanian Civic Space. In Biekart, K, Kontinen, T & Millstein, M., Civil Society Responses to Changing Civic Spaces (pp. 121-144). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Mac Ginty, R. (2015). Where is the local? Critical localism and peacebuilding. Third World Quarterly, 36(5), 840–856.

Wessel, M. van., & Kontinen, T. (2023). Conceptual foundations: Reimagining roles, relations, and processes. In Van Wessel, M., Kontinen, T., & Bawole, J.Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development: Starting from the South (p. 19-37). Abingdon: Routledge.

Author

• Margit van Wessel, Wageningen University