It happened over two decades ago, but an unfortunate experience with okra at his farm in Kithinu, central Kenya, molded Agostine Mwaniki into the environmentalist he is today.
Mwaniki set aside a section of his land to grow fruits and vegetables like the popular pod, through irrigation, but found the perishables also required intensive use of fertilizers and other chemicals and to boost yields on the one-acre piece of land.
Within a few years, the land had become barren. To date, efforts to restore that section to its natural state have failed, years after he abandoned chemical-dependent farming in favour of agroecology, or a system of growing food in ways that care for the land, people, and future generations.
“I sold the produce for very good money. But the farm’s soil died because I used a lot of fertilizers and chemicals. I have tried to apply manure, but nothing is good there,” said Mwaniki.
His experience was not confined to his rural farm. In the following years, as he pursued an education away from home, he witnessed industrial farming in the larger Mt. Kenya region amplifying deforestation, polluting the environment and even destroying health systems.
The sum effects of these pressures have exacerbated low crop yields due to erratic and inadequate rainfall. Rivers have dried up, and wildlife that is crucial to ecosystem balance, like bees, have suffered population decline. Among humans, there has also been an escalation of non-communicable diseases.
Now Mwaniki and other Kenyans are turning to traditional knowledge, in the form of customary laws, to heal land scarred by damaging agricultural practices and to face a future defined by climate uncertainty.
A cultural meltdown
To understand the reasons his home region was experiencing decline in life support systems, Mwaniki spoke to experts he had come to know while pursuing his education. He could not get satisfactory answers. And that troubled him, until memories from his past flashed through his mind.
After getting circumcised, he joined other initiates from his tribe in seclusion, or a time when boys are isolated from the rest of the family to heal while elder members of the society share generational knowledge with them. The initiates also get a new name. Nto Mugira was the one given to him, which in Kitharaka means “someone who brings.”
Mwaniki tried to live up to his given name by helping the needy, including through volunteer work. And as if his moniker was urging him on beyond the village, he found himself wondering how he could be more useful as he studied abroad. It was at this stage that he figured he could share ideas, knowledge and skills he had acquired as part of the ‘bringing’. This was after a well-traveled friend from his home approached him with stories of how a growing number of professionals the world over were giving back to their community through culture.
“The friend shared the idea with a colleague and me that there are many people all over the world who are reviving their culture. We agreed we should go back home and share the idea with community members because like me, the community had started losing the taste of our culture."
“The friend shared the idea with a colleague and me – that there are many people all over the world who are reviving their culture. We agreed we should go back home and share the idea with community members. Because like me, the community had started losing the taste of our culture,” said Mwaniki, as he recalls how this cultural erosion was triggered.
During Kenya’s struggle for independence, the colonial administration, in its strategy to divide and rule, had attempted to distance communities from their own cultures by associating them with savagery.
The propaganda caught on, and was unfortunately inherited by the ruling class that took over the reins of power after independence. Consequently, the educated elite aligned themselves with the ruling class, who wanted to distance themselves from these traditions. The cultural meltdown had begun.
By the end of the millennium, civilized Kenyans shunned these traditions for their association with female genital mutilation, child marriage, wife inheritance, hostility and witchcraft. The rural Kenya elders, who were custodians of community traditions, were ignored.
Despite the risk of facing similar stigma, Mwaniki and his colleagues went back to their community. Their gamble paid off. The very elders that society had marginalized provided the answers he was seeking.
During meetings and close conversations with them, he learned that for generations, his home region rarely experienced drought because rainfall was frequent, and rivers flowed with fresh water due to abundant tree cover. Wildlife thrived and lived freely alongside human communities.
This ecosystem balance thrived because communities followed a set of rules that applied traditional norms and beliefs to preserve forests, rivers and water sources, regenerate soils, and protect wildlife – or what is commonly referred to as customary laws – to sustain their livelihoods.
Tracing customary laws’ origins
Customary laws are rooted in communities’ cultural and social fabric, practiced over time to provide community governance and, to a larger extent, environmental conservation. The rules ensured nature continued to provide food, fuel, medicine and spiritual healing, and preserved pre-independence traditions differing among the country’s 40 ethnic groups spread across varied ecosystems.
Although not in written script, they were formed from lived experiences that guided communities on how to sustainably harvest natural resources while preventing environmental degradation. And they weren’t just propagated, but also enforced.
At the county restaurant in Kathwanwa, a parched settlement hosting Mwaniki’s County headquarters, Tharaka-Nithi stretches back on a plastic outdoor chair before going into detail on the importance of customary laws to ecology and food systems.
In between sips of soft drinks, he narrates how he grew up witnessing customary laws at work, and the examples are intriguing. There was a specific way of harvesting a tree to ensure the remaining stump regenerated. Grazing along river banks was prohibited to prevent risks like pollution and siltation, he says.
Similarly, farmers applied time-tested honey harvesting skills that prevented bees from abandoning their hives, while grazing land was zoned to ensure pastures regenerated and that the ripe ones could feed livestock even during drought cycles. Hunters were allowed to catch only male wildlife to ensure the species’ genetic line was preserved through the living female. Additionally, hunting a nesting bird was prohibited because this would kill the unhatched eggs.
In wider Kenya, customary laws are being applied to conserve forests and water sources, aiming to battle climate change and land degradation, while enabling Indigenous communities to access and manage natural resources, according to Gathuru Mburu, a conservationist with the Ngaatho Community Foundation, a local nonprofit. Today’s application of customary laws follows a similar script that Mwaniki witnessed growing up, Mburu said.
In Kenya, the set of rules have started changing perceptions on the usefulness of indigenous knowledge in environmental conservation amid a highly educated population and cultural systems that have almost been abandoned altogether.
The usefulness of customary laws, however, depends on context, the countries within which they are adopted, and their purpose, according to Lucy Njuguna, climate change adaptation and policy expert at the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT. Although they are not codified, she argues, it is important for governments to recognize them in formal systems of conservation because of their growing influence, even at the global goal on adaptation level outlined by the Paris Agreement.
“Customary laws are a very important component of adaptation within our context because they have a role in guiding how natural resources are utilized. We have been pushing for that at the climate change negotiations,” said Njuguna, during a media lab and dialogue ahead of COP30 in Belem, Brazil.
Countries can present them as part of their National Adaptation Plans and they can be used as leverage to show how governments are responding to climate change. Momentum to recognize them at the global level grew at COP30, where the UN climate conference resolved to triple adaptation finance, protect the world’s forests and give a voice to Indigenous peoples, Njuguna said.
The health connection
In Kenya, perceptions are changing on the usefulness of Indigenous knowledge in environmental conservation amid a highly educated population and cultural systems that were nearly abandoned altogether. Their application is also believed to address rising food insecurity and lifestyle diseases that are troubling both the young and aged in Kenya.
In the over 60 years Margaret Thuo has lived in the northwest foothills of Mt. Kenya, she has witnessed frequent crop losses due to worsening erratic weather, fuelled by climate change. It is an environmental shock she believes can be fixed through planting indigenous trees to stabilize rainfall cycles, she said.
When she was growing up, it was rare for people from her community to fall sick from diseases like diabetes and arthritis because back then, the community depended on indigenous vegetables like cassava, arrow roots, yams and sweet potatoes, and herbs like neem tree, African olive, African greenheart and Prunus Africana.
The rich ecosystem provided these foods and herbs, but a worried Thuo says most of the sources have decreased or disappeared altogether due to overextraction of natural resources, a concern that studies confirm. An evolved food culture that has developed a taste for fast foods is on the other hand contributing to these lifestyle diseases, said Wanjiru, who is also a member of the local Ken East Forest Community Association.
“Customary laws can bring back healthy lifestyles because they encourage eating food picked from the farm and regular interaction with nature to fight diseases of loneliness like mental illness,” she said, confirming what research has shown about the mental health benefits of spending time in nature.
"Customary laws can bring back healthy lifestyles because they encourage eating food picked from the farm and regular interaction with nature to fight diseases of loneliness like mental illness."
Sharing the knowledge
Mwaniki, the okra farmer, and his colleagues met with elders at his village and after several eye-opening sessions, realized that he had pushed his fresh produce farm to its death through intensive use of chemicals and fertilizers. Yet a simple system that used indigenous knowledge would have saved him the trouble. It was based on a farming system dependent on nature to regenerate, or adding organic manure to increase production.
“I realized I was doing something bad and after learning slowly that customary laws used to help people produce food through respect for the environment and for each other, I started reviving my larger farm with Indigenous knowledge. Now I am getting good crop yields,” said Mwaniki.
The realization also inspired him to share this knowledge with other farmers in Kenya, and together with his friends, they founded a platform to achieve this, the Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation (SALT). A community-based organization, SALT is one of the movements in Kenya advocating for the integration of customary laws in the formal legal system to address environmental degradation, according to Mwaniki.
Working with farmers, SALT has begun applying customary laws in activities like staple food farming, beekeeping, grazing and preservation of sacred sites, which many communities in the country believe have a spiritual and nature connection to people. Their activities are backed by the government’s local administration, which, for instance, allows members access to restricted conservation sites.
The group was allowed to access a site that the government had set aside for the construction of a mega-dam. At the meeting, Mwaniki and his team held discussions with community members and local administration officials on the effects of the dam’s construction on locals’ land rights and concerns about displacement from their homes.
“We did a traditional ritual there and, luckily enough, the President of Kenya announced the government had canceled construction of the mega-dam on the same day we did the ritual,” said Mwaniki.
The cost of sleepy environmental policies
The process of integrating customary laws into Kenya’s formal legal system is still ongoing. This integration will rest on the strength of several policies that support the application of Indigenous knowledge on environmental conservation, including the Kenyan Constitution.
But activists argue the policies lack a clear pathways for their implementation, with Mburu arguing that the lack of an implementation strategy has amplified the stress climate change has placed on the country.
Kenya had 2.72 million hectares of natural forest covering 4.6% of its land area in 2022, but in 2024 alone, the country lost 8,340 hectares of forest, or an area two and half times larger than Nairobi National Park, Global Forest Watch reported. Meanwhile, the country’s water bodies are choking with waste due to the failure of office holders to implement government policies on waste disposal.
At the same time, the country is seeing the worsening effects of climate change. Mt. Kenya has lost 95% of its glaciers since the beginning of the 19th century. The remaining ones could be gone by the end of this decade, leading to drying up of freshwater rivers that the water tower feeds, reports suggest.
Government officials deny that environmental degradation is due to laxity in implementing environmental conservation, and according to Alex Lemarkoko, the Kenya Forest Service chief conservator of forests, the government is implementing policies that recognize customary laws in conservation through Community Forest Associations.
“We even have benefit-sharing regulations that define how communities will benefit in case of any investments in forestry,” said Lemarkoko, during the launch of the African Champion of Trees Award to recognize individuals and institutions that are accelerating the country’s progress in achieving 30% tree cover by 2032.
This political commitment to environmental conservation can be traced to leading conservationist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the late Wangari Maathai. Her win was inspired by her defense of Kenya’s forests and for facing off with the late President Daniel Arap Moi, who had taken sides with an elite class that was encroaching on forests for private development.
Since then, a government that supports environmental conservation has been popular with the public. In some cases, politicians have won by playing the land and environmental rights card in their campaigns.
A roadmap is taking shape
At the Bantu Mountain Lodge, a recreation facility on the edges of Mt. Kenya’s north-western flank forest, the process of mainstreaming customary laws into Kenya’s environmental conservation space is taking shape.
Within its compounds, Wa Iregi, an octogenarian towering at six feet tall, a height that matches his toughened complexion, hosts delegations of policymakers, locals, conservationists and members of the development community.
Having picked up leadership skills as a freedom fighter during Kenya’s independence struggle, he leads these delegations in traditional rituals, sacrifices and teaches how customary laws function and the consequences of breaking them.
Some of the most visible effects of breaking these traditional norms are on the environment – echoing traditional warnings by elders that breaching the laws would lead to droughts and famines, conflict and social breakdown.
"Our role as elders is to train Kenyans on how generational knowledge on traditional conservation can be usefully applied today."
During the sessions, Iregi explains to delegations how customary laws can be applied along the formal system in environmental conservation, and how the country stands to gain from these reforms.
He gives examples of how the laws can complement the existing formal system. For instance, during the construction of the Nairobi expressway to ease traffic congestion for motorists traveling to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, a sacred fig tree stood in the way.
The project contractors, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), proposed that the tree should be uprooted to allow construction to progress as outlined by the original road design. But Kenyans objected.
Tensions flared, but after Iregi was consulted by the government to explain why the tree should not be uprooted, an understanding was reached between the opposing parties and construction went around it.
“This is how customary laws can complement the formal system to conserve the environment and protect the country’s heritage. Our role as elders is to train Kenyans on how generational knowledge on traditional conservation can be usefully applied today,” says Iregi.
Codifying customary laws
The African Biodiversity Network (ABN) has joined the ranks of groups calling for environmental conservation reforms. Working with the Atiriri Kirima (custodians of the mountain) group, a local community conservation organization, they are taking the Bantu Lodge conversations further.
Like in TED talks, Indigenous knowledge on conservation is being passed to the youth through local universities and schools, while cultural knowledge exchanges between different ethnic groups in the country are proving to be a useful public lobbying tool.
Unlike in the past, when implementation of customary laws was a male-dominated affair, today’s system has included women in the conversations, who also participate in training the youth and passing this Indigenous knowledge to them.
There are also plans to produce books on Indigenous knowledge on conservation systems and integrate them into the country’s education curriculum, according to Nahashon Karaya, who has been trained on the importance of customary laws in conservation through the ABN-community partnership.
Beyond advocacy, communities are documenting customary laws which they plan to present to the government as part of the plural system on environmental conservation they are lobbying for.
The plan is to push them through with the help of local opinion shapers, elected leaders and institutions like the Kenya Forestry Research Institute and the National Museums, said Karaya.
Within East Africa, Uganda has adopted customary laws for environmental conservation, and as Elia Mwanga, a researcher at the University of Dodoma, argues, the cultural richness held in indigenous systems are essential to battle climate change.
For governments, nonprofits and conservationists to implement climate change projects successfully, they will need to structure them within the indigenous knowledge context because such projects are more easily accepted by communities, while the knowledge is known to promote equity, efficiency and environmental integrity, argues Mwanga.
“Adoption of customary laws is a small step but can turn out to be a giant leap in restoring the country’s lost biodiversity,” said Wa Iregi.
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