Abstract  

This working paper explores literature to establish the interrelationship between Large Scale  Land Acquisition (LSLA) and pastoralists’ climate change adaptation. The paper builds on a  wealth of academic and policy literature that has emerged over the last decade, mainly  concerned with the extraordinary growth of the LSLA phenomenon since the year 2000 and  resultant contestation with indigenous communities. By adopting a climate change adaptation  framing, the paper examines the opportunities and constraints that arise from LSLA’s for  pastoralism and pastoralists’ climate change adaptation strategies. The paper finds that LSLA disrupts mobility, a traditional pastoral resilience strategy while precipitating a discursive space  of contestation that may further constrain pastoralists climate change adaptation, or provide opportunities for pastoralists to assert rights for adaptation to impacts of climate change. This  takes place through wide-ranging forms of negotiations around access to privatized pastoral  lands, and by pastoralists tapping into contested visions of transformation mainly driven by  governments and investors based on expropriation of extensive pastoral lands.  

Large Scale Land Acquisitions and Pastoralists’ Climate Change Adaptation in Kenya