Ewaso Nyiro River is dying and Kenya cannot afford to look away

On every World Environment Day, the world pauses to reflect on the state of our planet. For Northern Kenya, however, the environmental conversation is not abstract. It flows through the Ewaso Nyiro River. Or at least, it used to.

Stretching for over 700km, from the Central Kenya highlands through Laikipia, Samburu, Isiolo, Marsabit, beyond into the Lorian Swamp, Wajir and Southern Somalia, the Ewaso Nyiro is more than a river.

It is the sacrosanct ecological flow of life and economic artery of Kenya's drylands, sustaining over 3.6 million people, vast wildlife populations, pastoral economies, tourism enterprises, sand harvesters and agricultural livelihoods across nearly one-third of the country. Today, that lifeline is under unprecedented pressure.

The story of the Ewaso Nyiro is no longer simply an environmental story. It is a story of climate change, economic vulnerability, social instability and growing climate injustice.

Across the basin, communities are witnessing environmental changes that would have seemed unimaginable a generation ago. Drought cycles that once occurred every eight to 10 years are now recurring every three to five years. Rainfall seasons have become increasingly erratic and difficult to predict. River flows continue to decline during dry periods now by about 40 per cent over the last four decades, while devastating floods have become more frequent and destructive, even in unforeseen circumstances.

The consequences are visible everywhere. Pastoral families are losing livestock after prolonged droughts. Farmers upstream, are struggling with uncertain water supplies. Entire villages have faced displacement due to flooding.

A case in point is Iresaboru, a 40-year-old village in Isiolo South, with over 250 households, which got completely submerged and entirely displaced in 2021, while Godh Rupa and Malka Funan villages in Merti got fully under water in 2024. Over 190,000 of acres of grazing land were destroyed by wildfires in Sericho (hosting the Lorian Swamp) in 2025 alone, leaving communities vulnerable to hunger, poverty and disease.

Resource competition around water and pasture is intensifying, contributing to recurring tensions and conflict among communities whose survival depends on natural resources. This violence is actively evolving driven by other underlying contemporary crude commercial networks, political incitements, land tenure boundary frictions and ethno-supremacy issues.

Scientific evidence increasingly confirms what local communities have known for years: The Ewaso Nyiro Basin is becoming more hydro-climatically unstable. Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy is that those suffering the most are among those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis.

Nationally, Kenya’s Greenhouse gas emissions, stands at 1.75 tonnes per person, standing at 0.19 per cent of the global share, as at 2024. Pastoralist communities along the Ewaso Nyiro have some of the world’s lowest carbon footprints. Their livelihoods are rooted in traditional systems that have coexisted with nature for centuries. Nevertheless, they are paying the highest price for a global problem largely created elsewhere, facing the most disproportionate scale of climate devastation.

This is why the crisis facing the Ewaso Nyiro is not merely a climate crisis. It is a climate injustice crisis. When communities with negligible greenhouse gas emissions lose livestock to drought, homes to floods and livelihoods to ecosystem collapse, justice becomes inseparable from environmental policy.

The future of the Ewaso Nyiro matters far beyond Northern Kenya. The river serves as an early warning system for what many climate-vulnerable regions across Africa may soon face: Declining water security, weakened livelihoods, increased displacement and growing competition over shrinking natural resources. But decline is not inevitable.

Kenya still has an opportunity to reverse this trajectory through bold investments in climate resilience and sustainable natural resource governance. First, protecting and restoring catchments and riparian ecosystems must become a national priority.

Healthy landscapes are the foundation of healthy rivers. Second, climate adaptation financing must increasingly target dryland counties, where vulnerability is highest and resilience investments can deliver transformative impacts. Third, indigenous knowledge systems should be recognised as strategic climate adaptation assets.

- Mr Dida is Executive Director and Lead Researcher, ASAL Research and Resilience Programme