The Sustainable Management of Resource Based Conflicts in Africa: a Case of Laikipia County in Kenya

Abstract

A journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, so has been the journey towards natural resource conflict management. The conflict has however never ended; it instead keeps recurring. Why despite all efforts to manage it? This research takes us on a journey to the beautiful County of Laikipia where the beauty of natural resources is a bestowment. Forests and wild animals, herders to smallholder farmers, land in volumes, and richness in cultures but blood fills the place when these resources are wanted. The researcher tries to identify why over the years conflicts over and about these resources has been occurring, identifying some of the solutions that have been in place in an effort to try and manage these conflicts, which have worked and which have failed in an effort to try and identify the sustainable means of managing the conflicts. The study looks into the relationship between the existence of natural resources and how this existence results into conflict, further looking at the policy frameworks in place input by the government and other legal frameworks, and also strategies that have been in place and the challenges faced in the efforts to implement these foreseen solutions to practice. The journey into the natural resources based conflicts in Laikipia aims at ensuring that the methods used in managing the conflicts are as up to date to the current and existing problems, focus on the people and aim at achieving the important sustainable development goals which through a focus to the attainment help to manage various keys within countries in an effort to promote social, economic and environmental development. The study hopes to show that the reoccurrence of natural resource-based conflicts is as a result of unsustainable means in the management and hopes to provide sustainable solutions of development that can be applied and adopted where applicable whilst improving already working mechanisms to reduce and slowly end the reoccurrence of resource-based conflicts.