Climate Change and Its Impact on Land Use: A Case Study of Marsabit County, Kenya

Abstract

This study examines compound vulnerability in Marsabit County, Kenya's second-largest county, where approximately 95 per cent of the population depends on pastoral or agro-pastoral production. Climate change and development pressures are jointly reshaping land use patterns in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands, with profound implications for pastoral livelihoods. Using a mixed-methods case study approach spanning 1990-2025, the research integrates climate data, satellite imagery analysis, policy documents, and development project assessments to document how climate change and development interventions interact to transform pastoral land use systems. Findings reveal significant climate change manifestations: temperature increases of 0.05°C per annum, rainfall decline of 5.18mm per annum, and intensifying droughts (2010-2011, 2016-2017, 2020-2022) that have devastated pastoral livelihoods. The 2022 drought alone killed 273,000 livestock. Ecological impacts include vegetation loss, with the Marsabit Forest Reserve losing 52.7 per cent of closed forest and 75.7 per cent of open forest between 1990 and 2010, reducing rangeland productivity. Development pressures, including the Lake Turkana Wind Farm, conservation area expansion, and urban growth, restrict pastoral land access and mobility. Wind energy installations occupy dry-season grazing areas, conservation fencing blocks migration routes, and agricultural expansion fragments landscapes. These interventions, promoted as climate mitigation or economic solutions, undermine pastoral mobility, creating a "double squeeze" where climate-reduced resources are compressed into development-restricted spaces. This forces decentralisation, alters herd composition, drives diversification into marginal activities, and causes impoverishment. The study reveals that poor households, women, and certain ethnic groups experience disproportionate impacts, highlighting differential vulnerability within pastoral populations.