Kenyan scholar and indigenous peoples’ advocate Kendi Borona has been named one of six Rangeland Heroes by the Global Landscapes Forum, alongside others from Peru, Jordan, India, Argentina and Mongolia.
The recognition comes at an important moment; the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, and the world is turning its attention to the future of these often misunderstood landscapes as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification begins its 17th Conference of Parties in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Borona, leads Nia Tero’s work in Africa, supporting efforts to fund Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship of their lands and waters.
Her recognition is significant for Kenya because it puts a spotlight on an issue that rarely receives the attention it deserves in national development conversations: the value of rangelands and the knowledge of the people who have managed them for generations.
Rangelands cover about 54 percent of the Earth’s land surface and store nearly 30 percent of terrestrial carbon. They support the livelihoods of about 500 million pastoralists and indirectly sustain around two billion people.
Across Turkana, Marsabit, Samburu, Isiolo, Laikipia and Kajiado, rangelands support livestock, wildlife, biodiversity and rural economies.
They are also increasingly important in a country confronting recurrent drought, land degradation, water stress and climate-related losses.
However, rangelands are frequently viewed through the narrow lens of underdevelopment, with pastoralist communities treated as beneficiaries of development programmes rather than custodians of sophisticated ecological knowledge.
Kenya has invested heavily in climate policies, carbon markets, tree planting and other mitigation measures. Those interventions matter.
However, climate action cannot be reduced to forests and carbon credits while vast rangeland ecosystems receive inadequate investment and pastoralist knowledge remains underutilised.
The six women recognised by the Global Landscapes Forum demonstrate that rangeland leadership is taking place in farms, communities, laboratories, advocacy organisations and policy rooms across the world.
Kenya has a particularly strong story to tell, because the country’s pastoralist communities possess generations of knowledge about mobility, livestock, water, grazing patterns and adaptation to climatic variability. That knowledge should be treated as an asset in climate policy, not as an obstacle to modernisation.
As the world gathers in Mongolia for COP17, Kenya, with its deep experience, rich pastoral heritage, and great heroines such as Kendi Borona, should lead by example and show the world that rangelands are not wastelands waiting to be converted, but vital landscapes that sustain people, livestock, biodiversity and livelihoods.
They are productive ecosystems, carbon stores, wildlife habitats, food systems and homes.
Kendi Borona’s recognition is a reminder that some of the most important climate solutions may already exist in the landscapes that development has spent decades overlooking.
