Living with the forest: conservation and shifting socio-ecological relations in Baringo, Kenya (working title)

Forests around the world crystallize often competing issues of nature conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, production of economic assets and questions of environmental justice. While deforestation in Kenya is framed as an important concern, forests in the country are also involved in political struggles, including local claims on land. My research is interested in forest conservation in such a contested background. With an ethnographic approach, it is concerned with the complex human-forest interactions, at local level, that underpin, shape and inform questions of environmental justice and forest management.

My research focuses on the Katimok forest reserve, a small governmental forest in the Baringo county in Kenya. Situated in the steep and erosion prone Tugen Hills, in the water catchment area of the Lake Baringo, Katimok entails mainly indigenous species and is under protection. However, the forest reserve also includes plantation areas where exotic timber is grown for commercial exploitation. While the forest is in the custody of the state, claims over the land have been voiced for many years by the local inhabitants residing around the forest reserve. In such a context, what does forest conservation mean for the people who are living in Katimok, and interact with the forest on a daily basis? My research is mainly ethnographic but brings together a wide array of methods. With the aim to contextualize the case of Katimok, the research also includes another case study on the Narasha forest, a much larger governmental forest in the South of Baringo, primarily used for commercial purposes.

My work studies human-forest relations in Katimok. It investigates the historical roots of forest conservation in Katimok and in the wider context of the Baringo region and Kenya since the establishment of the colonial rule. My focus lies on the entanglements between people and the forest: I examine how the forest landscape and people’s lives have transformed together in the course of history, but also explore the continuing effects of such complex relationships – at material, social and political levels - on the current ways of living with the forest. I am interested in the role that the forest plays in livelihoods but also in the cultural and social practices, and in the political life of Katimok residents.

My research draws on environmental history, political ecology and more-than-human approaches to question how people are becoming with (in Donna Haraway’s words) the forest in Katimok - and the implications it entails for questions of environmental justice and forest governance.

Short biography:

I have an interdisciplinary background in environmental sciences and humanities. I studied general biology and social sciences in a dual bachelor programme followed by a dual master in environmental sciences and policy in Sciences Po Paris and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). In preparation for my PhD, I did an additional research master programme in Development Studies with a focus in anthropology at the “Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales” (EHESS) in Paris. Since April 2018, I am doing my PhD in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Cologne under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig. My research is part of the Collaborative Research Center 228 “Future Rural Africa: Future-making and social-ecological transformation”, and of the subproject “Future Conservation” that focuses on nature conservation in Kenya and Namibia. I am mainly interested in the anthropology of human-environment relations and my research is particularly inspired by the nature/culture debate in anthropology, political ecology and more-than-human approaches.

Contact: llacan(at)uni-koeln.de

_{Cover photo: Driving across Katimok forest – Picture taken by the author (April 2019). // Portrait photo: Private.}