Kenya's last mile of governance: How chiefs are responding to the climate crisis

Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo during a recent luncheon at the German ambassador’s residence, showcasing Kenya’s chiefs’ climate change initiative. [Courtesy]

As climate change intensifies droughts, floods, displacement and resource competition, Kenya’s Chiefs have emerged as some of the country’s most important local responders—bridging government and communities, preventing conflict and strengthening resilience where it matters most.

While the world debates climate policy in conference halls, Kenya's Chiefs are already managing its consequences—one community, one conflict and one crisis at a time.

As climate change redraws patterns of migration and resource use, Kenya's Chiefs are quietly managing the conflicts that emerge long before they become national security crises.

Among Kenya’s many public institutions, few are as visible, accessible and consequential as the office of the Chief. Long before policies are implemented or reports are filed, Chiefs are already responding to emerging challenges in the communities they serve. As climate change reshapes livelihoods, migration patterns and local security dynamics, their role has become increasingly important.

Climate change is no longer merely an environmental issue. It is a governance challenge, a development challenge and, increasingly, a security challenge. Droughts, floods and environmental degradation are placing unprecedented pressure on communities, particularly in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands. Competition over water, pasture and livelihoods is intensifying, while climate-induced mobility is becoming a defining feature of the new reality.

Before these pressures become national crises, Chiefs are often the first to respond.

In many respects, Chiefs are the closest thing Kenya has to devolved security. Because they are seldom transferred, they accumulate invaluable local institutional memory—an intimate understanding of community histories, relationships and conflict dynamics that cannot be replicated through short-term deployments. Their effectiveness is rooted in a deep understanding of local histories, customs, languages and relationships. They are often the first to identify emerging risks, mediate disputes and mobilize communities around collective solutions. This combination of local legitimacy, administrative authority and accumulated institutional memory makes them indispensable in managing the growing challenges associated with climate change

Chiefs occupy a unique position within Kenya’s governance architecture. As officers of the National Government Administration, they serve as the critical link between national policy and local implementation. They coordinate with County Commissioners, Deputy County Commissioners and Assistant County Commissioners while working closely with county governments, sector ministries, security agencies and development partners. This position enables them to relay local concerns to decision-makers, coordinate responses across institutions and ensure government programmes reach communities effectively.

Nowhere is this role more evident than in Kenya’s north-eastern frontier. For years, Chiefs have quietly managed climate-induced mobility and resource pressures across the Kenya–Somalia border. Even during periods when formal government authority across the border was weak or absent, they maintained channels of communication through clan elders and customary institutions.

In many respects, these Chiefs functioned as informal climate diplomats.

As recurrent droughts pushed pastoralist communities across borders in search of water and pasture, Chiefs relied on local knowledge and trusted relationships to manage movement, negotiate access and reduce the risk of conflict. They understood clan networks that transcend national boundaries and worked through respected elders to resolve disputes before they escalated. Long before climate mobility became part of international policy discussions, Chiefs were already managing its consequences on the ground.

Their experience offers an important lesson: resilience is not built solely through infrastructure, technology or policy frameworks. It also depends on institutions capable of maintaining social cohesion, coordinating responses and adapting quickly to changing circumstances.

 Chiefs play a vital role as a one-stop shop for all matters resilience, serving as the primary link between communities, government services, and humanitarian actors. During times of crisis, they are often the first point of contact for citizens, coordinating displacement response, identifying vulnerable households, and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Their leadership is equally critical in public health, where they mobilize communities during immunization campaigns and support disease prevention efforts. Chiefs also work closely with veterinary officers to protect livestock, safeguarding the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on pastoralism and agriculture. By bringing together disaster response, public health, education, livelihood protection, and community mobilization, chiefs provide an integrated, trusted, and accessible platform for building resilience at the local level.

They are also increasingly important champions of environmental stewardship. Through tree-growing initiatives, watershed protection efforts and conservation activities, they help communities strengthen resilience while safeguarding the natural resources on which local economies depend. They also work with communities to curb deforestation and unsustainable charcoal burning, recognising that protecting forests is essential for conserving water catchments, restoring ecosystems and reducing climate vulnerability.

Perhaps the best way to understand the office of the Chief is to think of it as Kenya’s Safaricom-Plus Network.

Technology can connect people, but even the strongest network has limits. Just as mobile technology has transformed disaster preparedness through early warning alerts that enable communities to evacuate before floods, respond to drought conditions and access life-saving information, Chiefs ensure those warnings translate into coordinated local action. Chiefs provide something no mobile signal can replicate: a permanent presence within the community. During droughts, floods, disease outbreaks, displacement crises and other emergencies, they remain the trusted point of coordination between citizens, government institutions and service providers.

Investing in Chiefs is therefore not merely an administrative matter. It is an investment in climate adaptation, peacebuilding, disaster preparedness and community resilience.

More importantly, building the capacity of a Chief is ultimately about building the capacity of a location. Better equipped, better trained and better supported Chiefs strengthen communities’ ability to respond to challenges, seize opportunities and adapt to change. When local capacity grows, national resilience grows with it.

As climate change continues to reshape Kenya’s future, the country will need institutions capable of mobilising collective action, coordinating across different levels of government and responding quickly to emerging threats. Few institutions are better positioned to perform that role than the office of the Chief.

They may rarely make headlines, but they remain among the country’s most effective public servants: peacebuilders, community mobilisers, informal climate diplomats and first responders to the challenges of a changing climate.

They are, quite simply, Kenya’s last mile of governance.

- The writer is a Governance and Communication Expert