DKK 10 million for research into community-driven climate initiatives in local areas in Kenya

Public protests, clean-up activities in and along rivers, surveying riverbanks, establishment of green spaces and awareness campaigns.

Engaged citizens in densely populated informal urban areas along the rivers in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, are making efforts to combat the negative consequences of climate change.

These local initiatives may contribute to more inclusive governance and decision-making regarding climate change at a time of significant urban population growth, increasing climate impacts and a global shift in development aid.

The new transcontinental research project WATERSHED will examine this over the next five years. The project, led by Associate Professor Jacob Rasmussen together with Associate Professor Somdeep Sen from Roskilde University, has received a grant of DKK 10.2 million from the Danida Fellowship Centre.

The project is a collaboration between researchers from Roskilde University and two Kenyan educational institutions (Technical University of Kenya and United States International University), as well as local actors in Kenya.

“The struggle for social inclusion and rights increasingly overlaps with issues of climate justice. The populations most exposed to climate risks in African megacities are also the most vulnerable in relation to structural inequalities such as politically motivated interventions and limited access to basic public services, while at the same time experiencing the most inadequate prevention against climate-related events,” says Associate Professor Jacob Rasmussen from Roskilde University.

Nairobi is an illustrative example

The project’s researchers and other participants will examine how climate vulnerability, in this specific context, in the form of flooding, affects the three densely populated informal settlements of Mathare, Korogocho and Pumwami along the rivers in Nairobi.

The project may contribute to shaping fair governance and decision-making processes related to climate change for residents in informal urban areas. In addition, the project will generate knowledge — together with actors in the local community — about climate hazards and structural vulnerabilities in informal urban areas.

Nairobi in Kenya serves as an illustrative example due to the combination of urban population growth, which largely takes place in informal settlements, climate challenges such as flooding and intense heat concentrated in urban areas, and economically and technically constrained climate adaptation.

“Nairobi is experiencing exponential population growth and, in the past three years alone, has been affected by several floods resulting in significant loss of life and material damage. At the same time, the current government has forcibly cleared and bulldozed several informal settlements along the rivers, with the official explication that these are climate protection measures. The local climate struggles in Nairobi thus function as a lens through which to observe and understand how increasing climate challenges, struggles for rights and political planning challenges overlap in megacities characterised by extreme inequality,” says Jacob Rasmussen.

Researchers behind the project — from both Denmark and Kenya — are collaborating, among others, with the civil society organisation Dreamtown, with Kenyan authorities in the field of climate, and with UN-HABITAT, the United Nations programme for housing and urban development, which has its regional headquarters in Nairobi.