Making County Climate Funds Conflict-Sensitive

Kenyan counties advance the integration of peacebuilding and climate adaptation through the County Climate Change Fund

Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) are on the frontline of climate change. Recurrent droughts, water scarcity, and growing pressure on pasture and land continue to undermine livelihoods and strain relations between communities. In these contexts, climate adaptation is never only a technical exercise. Decisions about where investments are made, who participates, and how resources are shared can either help manage tensions or deepen them.

Recognizing this reality, CGIAR Climate Security has partnered with the Adaptation Consortium and Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) to support Kenyan counties in integrating conflict sensitivity into locally led climate action. The collaboration focuses on strengthening the County Climate Change Fund (CCCF) as it expands nationwide, ensuring that adaptation investments also contribute to peace and social cohesion.

A locally led mechanism under growing pressure

The CCCF has become one of Kenya’s flagship responses to climate risk. As a devolved financing and governance mechanism, it enables county governments to plan, prioritize, and fund climate adaptation interventions at both county and ward levels. Through County Climate Change Planning Committees (CCCPCs) and Ward Climate Change Planning Committees (WCCPCs), government officials, technical experts, and community representatives jointly identify climate risks and agree on locally appropriate responses.

This participatory design has helped ensure that adaptation investments reflect local needs. Yet, as climate pressures intensify in ASAL counties, the risk that well-intended projects could exacerbate local conflicts has become more apparent. Competition over water points, pasture, and mobility corridors can sharpen if projects fail to account for existing tensions or power dynamics.

As one WCCPC representative in Laikipia County observed, “When there is a conflict, the peace guys come to resolve not even knowing how it started. Peace players must be involved in project design.”

Assessing conflict sensitivity in the CCCF

To better understand how the CCCF could reduce conflict risks while strengthening resilience, the Climate Security team at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, together with the Adaptation Consortium, conducted an assessment published in 2025. The analysis applied the Conflict Sensitivity Wheel, a framework that examines how adaptation policies and institutions address participation, inclusion, coordination, accountability, and early warning of tensions.

The assessment highlighted several entry points for strengthening the CCCF’s peacebuilding potential. These included expanding community representation in decision-making, improving coordination with local peace committees and early warning systems, and ensuring that funded projects respond to existing pressures over land, water, and mobility rather than unintentionally reinforcing them.

Following the analysis, the Adaptation Consortium and CGIAR Climate Security partnered with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to align peacebuilding functions with county-level adaptation processes. Findings were tailored to county contexts and published as policy briefs with the governments o f Isiolo, Wajir, and Kitui, offering concrete recommendations for integrating conflict-sensitive approaches into CCCF planning and implementation. 

From recommendations to practice

Turning analysis into action requires more than policy guidance. To support practical uptake and expand learning across counties, the project convened two design-thinking workshops in Nanyuki, Laikipia. Participants included climate change units, county peace directorates, peace committee representatives, civil society organizations, and other local actors from Laikipia and Isiolo counties.

Bringing adaptation and peacebuilding stakeholders into the same space helped clarify how existing policies and coordination mechanisms interact in practice. Discussions focused on linking early warning systems, peace committee activities, sector plans, and CCCF procedures to improve how adaptation investments engage with conflict dynamics.

Four priorities emerged from the workshops:

• Building capacity for conflict analysis and peace programming grounded in everyday community experiences.
• Strengthening coordination between peace structures at national, county, sub-county, and community levels.
• Reinforcing early warning and early response mechanisms for conflict threats.
• Addressing political drivers of conflict, including nepotism and ethnic patronage.

As one peacebuilding practitioner from Isiolo noted, “Don’t think what is best for people, ask what is best for them.”

Lessons for Kenya’s devolved system

The experience offers broader lessons for Kenya’s devolved governance system. First, capacity development is most effective when it starts from a realistic understanding of how institutions function in practice by mapping actual decision-making pathways, power relations, and informal norms, not just formal mandates.

Second, strengthening coordination does not necessarily require creating new structures. Building on existing governance mechanisms that already convene actors often proves more effective and sustainable. The workshops also underscored that integrating climate adaptation and peacebuilding is less a technical fix than a learning process, requiring sustained spaces for shared problem-solving across professional cultures.

Finally, the findings caution against siloed or territorially bounded approaches. Climate risks and conflict dynamics often span counties and landscapes, calling for capacity development that cuts across administrative boundaries, sectors, and governance levels. Local civil society organizations and other intermediary actors play a critical role in sustaining trust, institutional memory, and continuity beyond electoral cycles.

Next steps as the CCCF scales up

In 2026, insights from this work will inform updates to the Ward Climate Change Planning Committee training manual, embedding conflict-sensitive practices directly into county planning tools. As the CCCF continues to expand across Kenya, this step will help ensure that locally led adaptation not only strengthens climate resilience, but also contributes to more stable and peaceful relations in some of the country’s most climate-affected regions.

This work is carried out with support from the CGIAR Climate Action Science Program (CASP) and the CGIAR Food Frontiers and Security (FFS) Science Program. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/