How grassroots resistance fosters sustainability: lessons from sand harvesting and water availability in a farming community in Kenya

Sand harvesting is an economically lucrative business but poses hazards to riverine ecosystems and their inhabitants. In the sand rivers of sub-Saharan Africa, sand harvesting results in depletion of water resources used for agriculture, alongside increased erosion and destruction of agricultural lands and riparian vegetation. Sand harvesting occurs within a complex web of actors and interests, often with injustices and inequities in resource use. This study examines the impact of sand extraction on farming families and their livelihoods. It evaluates how a riparian farming community related to unregulated sand removal from a sand river in Kenya, resulting in a violent conflict. Based on surveys and semi-structured interviews, we evaluate the different impacts of sand harvesting on irrigated agriculture and the coping strategies of farmers. Also, we analyse the interactions between the efforts of the community and the governmental institutions in addressing the violent conflict and in restoring the river ecosystem. We find that excessive sand harvesting led to a depletion of water resources, forcing smallholder irrigators to cease farming operations. Using an environmental justice perspective, we find that grassroots actions evolved into a trigger for local government to curb sand harvesting conflicts and support river restoration. In conclusion, conflict served as a force to induce sustainability, impelled by a critical interplay of actions by community and the newly decentralized government. In this process, grassroots movements were not uniform and resistance was not a straightforward process, but one in which individuals changed position, opinion and alliances over time.