Camryn Durham, Jarrett Lemieux, Ashley Logan, Joana Medina Vega, Trinity Mosley, Natalie Parks, Alexis Petty
Our last full day in Kenya began with a meeting at The Nature Conservancy followed by a walking tour of the Nairobi National Museum. Both experiences allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of the connection between culture, the natural environment, and population health outcomes. Today’s activities served as a crucial reminder about the importance of preserving one’s culture and surrounding environment as a means of protecting and promoting health.
Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) serves as a global nonprofit and has grown to become one of the most efficient and extensive environmental organizations in the world. Through climate-centered strategies- it aims to protect land, fresh water, oceans, coastlines, and forests. TNC works in over 80 countries/territories and in 2007, the TNC-Kenya office was established. Kenya is rich in biodiversity and has a large portion of protected natural areas. However, 65-75% of wildlife live outside of federally protected land and marine areas – leading to an inevitable clash between human and natural communities. TNC-Kenya serves as the liaison of conservancies by strengthening governance, diversifying economies, and improving natural resource management. By aligning their mission with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development), TNC-Kenya is working toward supporting private sector and community conservancies to better improve their wildlife management and development capacities.
Due to developmental pressures and hunting, Kenya has seen an almost 70% decline in its wildlife over the last 40 years. For the people of Kenya, who live closely with wildlife, conservation has become a well-involved effort for all communities. Through the Wildlife Act of 2013, conservancies have become a recognized way to use land for conservation in Kenya. Additionally, this recognition offers community landowners various improved resources, access to additional income, and incentives for land leasing.
TNC established an “umbrella of conservancies” which include individual organizations and regional groups. Conservancies have multiple methods of ownership: community, group, private, or co-managed oversight. Community conservancies are established by community members on shared land – these form 51% of the total conservancy system recognized by the Kenyan Wildlife Conservancies Association. Group conservancies are formed through multiple private landowners who share borders, by combining their land to one large lot to focus needs on conservation. Private conservancies are those started and managed by a single landowner, and co-managed conservancies are agreements between the government and an individual or a governing body to manage a public piece of land for the effort of conservation and protection of Kenya’s vast wildlife.
Kenya is incredibly biodiverse, with over 35,000 species of flora & fauna and magnificent wildlife that call East Africa their home. Kenyan wildlife and natural resources have been harmed by various influences throughout history, such as deforestation and ivory poaching. Thus, leading to the endangerment or extinction of multiple species. Today, climate change is a pressing problem to the people of Kenya. As droughts and flooding become more extreme, livestock and crop yields are decreasing at an alarming rate. Water quality and quantity is decreasing and human-animal conflicts are becoming more frequent due to these extreme environmental conditions. Though TNC supports efforts to reverse the effects of climate change, and many of the conservancy lands are working toward controlled grazing and improved water management practices, global external factors that impact climate are being felt regularly by those who live in Kenya.
While many effects of climate change are immediately visible, some consequences are less obvious. Gender-based violence (GBV) is one such indirect but increasingly common result of climate change that is disproportionately affecting women’s lives in Kenya. The connection between climate change and GBV follows a complex chain of events. Older women who depend on cabbage farming for income are seeing their crops fail due to prolonged droughts or flash flooding caused by climate change. With no crops to sell and families to feed, these women are forced to turn to transactional sex as an alternative source of income. This survival strategy then exposes them to violence from male clients who mistreat them and family members who judge them. According to Dr. Ruth Marsha, a public health specialist at TNC, this pattern became evident when HIV rates began rising among older women in the affected regions. Traditionally, HIV diagnoses are more common among younger women, but the increase in transactional sex among older women driven by climate-related crop failures has led to a notable shift in HIV demographics, with older women now showing increased infection rates. This example illustrates how climate change creates a devastating cascade: environmental stress destroys livelihoods, forcing desperate survival choices that increase both violence against women and their health risks.
Women are also affected directly by policies implemented at conservancies that protect forests against deforestation, meaning that women are unable to cut trees to use for firewood for cooking. The delay in cooked meals has led to an increase in domestic violence against these women as traditional gender roles reinforce the idea that meals should be ready after a day’s work. This increase in violence against women demands alternative energy solutions. It is necessary to understand how climate change is directly affecting the livelihoods of women, specifically those in LMICs.
We visited the Nairobi National Museum that houses beautiful and fascinating collections of human and animal history, art, and culture from Kenya and other parts of eastern Africa. Kenya is globally recognized as the cradle of mankind, due to the archeological and paleontological discoveries of early humankind in this region of the world. The museum gallery traces the evolution of the human race through fossils and early remains of tools. We learned about early hominins, or human ancestors, such as Australopithecus Afarensis and the first official human species that appeared around 2.4 million years ago: Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis.
As we continued through the museum, we saw more exhibits dedicated to Kenyan culture. As a boy to man initiation ritual, circumcision is performed in sanitary conditions with about a two-three week recovery period. In most communities, this procedure allows for the introduction into roles of leaders, warriors, and marriage. This ritual is also performed for women;however, the conditions are much less sanitary. Women have been known to suffer from female genital mutilation with lifelong chronic pain, risk of infection, shock, tissue damage, and the chance of infertility. With an increase in social justice movements, communities are now embracing forms of alternative initiation in girls and young women that celebrate their coming of age without putting their quality of life in danger. Overall, the museum successfully preserves and displays key elements of Kenyan culture. Allowing for visitors to engage with its rich heritage and understand its impact on past, current, and future humans, resources, and wildlife in Kenya.
Because roughly 80% of Kenyans are dependent on natural resources in their daily lives, the Kenyan government is keen on policies targeted at mitigating the effects of climate change. Humans and wildlife alike are experiencing changes in weather patterns and season predictability, which in turn decreases food security, increases the spread of zoonotic diseases, and makes income generation volatile.
The push for climate health that we see from the Kenyan government and TNC is a stark contrast to the ideas of climate change in the United States. As current US policymakers push for less climate centered interventions and decrease funding targeted at environmental and land protection, more citizens seem to think of climate change as an imaginary problem. Though many communities in the US have recently suffered from unprecedented climate disasters, climate centered policy is still not a goal of the US government nor a central concern for the livelihood of many people.
Unfortunately, climate change is a problem that may not be addressed fully until more communities, and those in power, are directly impacted. Unfortunately, the lack of climate action in high income countries affects the rest of the world. As it was stated at TNC, “When the West sneezes, we all get a cold.” There is a generational shift in understanding climate change as a barrier to health. As future public health professionals, we must recognize the impact of climate change and implement innovative and sustainable solutions for the future of human, animal, and environmental health. In this realm, the United States can learn from countries like Kenya who are putting climate and health at the forefront of their policy and goals for posterity.
Today’s visit to The Nature Conservancy and the Nairobi National Museum emphasized that preserving culture and conservation is deeply connected in promoting health and social progress. Our visit with the TNC team highlighted the relationship between conservation, community, and climate change. The museum highlighted the diverse Kenyan culture, from early human origins to transitions from traditional to modern practices.
At both organizations, we recognized the increasing importance of climate change as not only an environmental crisis, but as a crisis of human rights, specifically amongst marginalized communities such as women and girls. TNC is using community centered conservation strategies to address these challenges, which include improving natural resource management, expanding reproductive health education through conservancies, and advocating for new climate centered health policies.
With a greater influence on the protection of culture and advocacy, communities in Kenya are leaning towards non-harmful and non-life changing rituals for men and women that preserve culture, but also protect animals, the planet, and promote health and human rights. Through this movement, and organizations like TNC and the Nairobi National Museum, education is enforced, traditions and cultures are celebrated and preserved, and the past is used as a means for developing a more inclusive, and equitable future for all species and the planet.
