Land tenure transformation: The case of community conservancies in northern Kenya

Over the last thirty years, community conservancies have become widespread in several African countries exemplifying new patterns of land and resource governance strategies. Since 1995, thirty-nine new community conservancies have been established in association with an NGO - the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya. Through community conservancies, or community-owned conservation initiatives organized around a demarcated area, the rights and responsibilities of resource governance are significantly reorganized. In this paper, we analyze the process of reorganizing the pastoralist commons in northern Kenya through community conservancies leading to land tenure transformation. Based on two case studies in northern Kenya, we show how land and natural resource governance interventions following a global policy blueprint through community conservancies results in real material and political consequences, and highlight the spatial implications as a result of this process. We argue that community conservancies significantly reorganize the governance of collectively used land and resources. This reorganization has serious implications for land tenure relations and has become the latest manifestation of the hardening of lines between communities in northern Kenya.