Conserving the Sacred: Socially Innovative Efforts in the Loita Enaimina Enkiyio Forest in Kenya

Joan Nyagwalla Otieno (), Vittorio Bellotto, Lawrence Salaon Esho and Pieter Van den Broeck ()
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Joan Nyagwalla Otieno: Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Vittorio Bellotto: Department of Earth & Environmental Science, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Lawrence Salaon Esho: Department of Spatial Planning and Design, Technical University of Kenya, Haile Selassie Avenue, Nairobi P.O. Box 52428-00200, Kenya
Pieter Van den Broeck: Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-22

Abstract: Indigenous Communities residing inside or next to autochthonal forests conserved them through governance frameworks that invoked traditional sacral law and reverence for their resource commons. More recently, however, the link between communities and forest conservation has been mired by dynamics of dispossession and displacement. Through a qualitative case study approach, using key informant interviews, transect walks, focus groups, and interviews, the researchers explore the conservation dynamics in Loita, in the South of Kenya, specifically looking at the sacred Enaimina Enkiyio forest. The study evaluated how the Loita community has challenged two state initiatives predicating conservation efforts and mobilised the sacred to conserve their resource commons. It combines a social-ecological approach with social innovation theory, spiritual geography, cultural studies and literature on indigenous knowledge systems, looking at, among others, sacred values attributed to places, nature–culture relationships, and value and belief systems and rituals. The findings point to the embeddedness of the forest resource in the way of life of the Loita Maasai and the appropriation of the ritual/sacred element as a framework to negotiate and mediate access, use, and conservation outcomes. The Loita community is grappling with and responding to the pressures exerted by various forces on the Loita Enaimina Enkiyio in socially innovative ways, as exemplified in the conservation efforts by the Ilkimpa Community Conservation Association (ICCA). It leverages aspects of the sacred in negotiating its claims over the Enaimina Enkiyio forest, showing that community-driven initiatives present alternative approaches capable of maintaining the connection between communities and their resource commons by integrating the sacred in this connection.

Keywords: conservation; sacred forest; social-ecological systems; Enaimina Enkiyio; indigenous forests; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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