Cyclic droughts, flooding and collective trauma: an environmental feedback loop to inform governance and socio-ecological resilience in Kenya’s rift valley

Introduction

Climate change is now recognised as a systemic challenge affecting ecological processes, economic development, public health and social stability. Rising temperatures and increasing climate variability have intensified the frequency and severity of droughts, floods, and heatwaves, with disproportionate consequences for communities dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022). In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), rain-fed agriculture remains the principal source of food production and household income for millions of rural families (Morton, 2007). Climate variability affects agricultural production and disrupts social cohesion, livelihood security, cultural identity, and psychological well-being (Adger, 2006; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022).

Kenya exemplifies these challenges, with increasingly frequent cycles of prolonged droughts and intense flooding. Major droughts in 1991–2, 1999–2001, 2008–9, 2011, and 2020–23 were followed by destructive floods in 1997–8, 2018, and 2024, disrupting agricultural systems, killing livestock, displacing communities, and damaging infrastructure (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; World Bank, 2021).

The psychosocial consequences of these extremes remain comparatively neglected. Emerging scholarship on ecological grief (grief related to environmental loss), climate anxiety (anxiety related to potential climate change impacts), and collective trauma (trauma experienced by groups and communities) suggests that repeated environmental loss affects mental health, community identity, social relationships, and collective decision-making (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Cunsolo et al., 2020). Affected communities face persistent uncertainty, reducing confidence in traditional livelihood systems and shaping behavioural responses in ways that either enhance or undermine environmental stewardship (Cinner et al., 2018).

This Perspective argues that collective trauma constitutes a critical but under-recognised mechanism linking climate change to socio-ecological resilience. Unlike individual chronic poverty and associated stress, collective trauma influences social norms, institutional behaviour, resource governance, and community adaptation over extended periods (Alexander et al., 2004). This makes collective trauma both an outcome of climate variability and a driver of environmental change.

Collective trauma: the missing dimension in conservation science

Community capacity to respond effectively to climate-induced calamities is shaped by collective experiences of loss and uncertainty, not just ecology and economics. These influence perceptions of risk, adaptive behaviour and environmental stewardship (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Folke et al., 2016). Emerging concepts such as ecological grief, climate anxiety, solastalgia and environmental distress describe emotional responses associated with degraded or lost landscapes, with environmental change recognised as an existential experience that alters people’s relationships with place, identity, culture, and livelihood (Albrecht et al., 2007; Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018).

Collective trauma extends this understanding beyond individual psychological responses to shared experiences that reshape social relationships, institutional trust, cultural memory, and patterns of collective action (Alexander et al., 2004; Erikson, 1976). Unlike isolated disasters, recurrent droughts and floods create persistent cycles of disruption, progressively weakening social resilience, confidence in traditional livelihoods, local institutions, and people’s capacity to prepare for subsequent events (see, for example, Birhanu et al, 2017 description in relation to pastoralists in neighbouring Ethiopia). In much of rain-fed Africa, communities are no longer responding to isolated disasters but living in a state of chronic uncertainty; cumulative stress that extends across generations and distinguishes collective trauma from one-off disaster impacts (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; Morton, 2007).

Social-ecological systems (SES) theory offers useful insights, conceptualising human societies and ecosystems as interconnected, with reciprocal feedbacks and adaptive processes (Folke et al., 2016; Ostrom, 2009). Applying an SES lens suggests that collective trauma is a consequence of climate variability and a driver of environmental change. Communities facing repeated droughts or floods often adopt coping strategies that prioritise immediate survival over long-term sustainability (Adger, 2006). Examples include cultivation of fragile lands, deforestation for charcoal, overgrazing, and unsustainable water abstraction. Such strategies may temporarily alleviate food insecurity but frequently accelerate land degradation, increasing vulnerability to future shocks (Adger et al., 2011; Reed, 2008). This mechanism helps explain why conventional adaptation frameworks centered on drought-tolerant crops, irrigation, flood control, and climate information services, may fall short when communities remain psychologically overwhelmed or lack the social cohesion needed for collective resource management (Moser and Ekstrom, 2010).

Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989) holds that psychological stress arises primarily from actual or anticipated loss of materially, socially, or culturally valued resources. As losses accumulate, communities become more vulnerable to distress and more likely to adopt short-term coping strategies that inadvertently accelerate environmental degradation. Together, SES and COR theories explain how human and ecological systems interact and why repeated disturbances alter behaviour in ways that erode ecosystem resilience (Folke et al., 2016; Rockström et al., 2009). Collective trauma, then, is integral to socio-ecological resilience, not a by-product of it.

For indigenous and local communities, this relationship is especially significant because landscapes often embody cultural identity, spiritual value, and historical memory (Berkes, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013). Environmental degradation therefore represents not only ecological loss but disruption of cultural continuity (Berkes, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013). This is relevant for Kenya’s Rift Valley, where repeated droughts, floods, and land-use change have simultaneously affected ecosystem integrity, agricultural productivity, and community well-being (World Bank, 2023; Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), 2023). This suggests that environmental degradation could be understood as a consequence of land management or climate change and as a manifestation of unresolved collective trauma.

Post-traumatic growth

Collective trauma should not be considered only as contributing to vulnerability and environmental degradation. Repeated exposure to adversity can also generate learning, adaptation, strengthened social relationships and renewed collective agency (Hirschberger, 2018). This positive dimension is consistent with scholarship on post-traumatic growth, which emphasises that people may develop new capacities and meanings following severe adversity (Norris et al., 2008; Masten, 2014). This may be expressed through strengthened community organisations, livelihoods diversification, disaster preparedness, cultural identity and collective action (Norris et al., 2008). For example, communities repeatedly affected by drought or flooding may use accumulated experience to strengthen water harvesting, develop local early-warning systems, restore degraded landscapes, or establish stronger mutual-support networks (e.g., Nyong et al., 2007).

Such outcomes should not be interpreted as inevitable consequences of trauma. They depend on enabling conditions including social cohesion, institutional and policy support, access to resources, and opportunities for meaningful participation (Masten, 2014; Reed, 2008). Climate shocks may generate trauma, but trauma can also stimulate learning and collective transformation given the resources and institutional space to catalyse adversity into resilience (Hirschberger, 2018).

Kenya’s Rift Valley encompasses diverse agroecological zones, from semi-arid rangelands of Baringo and Laikipia to high-potential maize-producing areas of Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, and Trans-Nzoia. The region supports globally significant ecosystems such as the Mau Forest Complex, one of East Africa’s most important water towers (Olang and Kundu, 2011; Were et al., 2021). This diversity exposes communities to different risks. Recurrent droughts, flash floods, landslides, and increasing rainfall variability make it an ideal region for examining how climate variability, environmental degradation, and collective trauma interact (Nicholson, 2017; Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), 2023).

Population density and land tenure are important considerations in the Rift Valley (Table 1). Population pressure and land fragmentation can increase competition for productive land and water and encourage cultivation of marginal areas, increasing exposure to drought and flood impacts. Secure tenure can encourage investment in soil conservation, agroforestry and restoration. While communal systems can support collective resource management, insecure or communal tenure may constrain long-term investment (Ostrom, 2009; Chepkochei et al., 2025). Poorly managed irrigation may generate environmental and social pressures (Caretta et al., 2018). These interacting inequalities can manifest as ecological grief, expressed as worry, frustration and distress associated with deterioration of valued landscapes, livelihoods and ecosystems (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Xue et al., 2024). Thus, ecological grief in the Rift Valley should be understood not simply as a psychological response to environmental calamity but as an outcome shaped by unequal socio-economic capacity to absorb and recover from recurrent climate shocks.

Table 1. Population Density (2019) and climate-related vulnerability in 15 counties in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

*Regional density calculated as total population divided by aggregate county area; county densities are based on 2019 KPHC population and land-area figures.

Land tenure, another important socioeconomic determinant, needs to be treated carefully because Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) (2019) statistics primarily report tenure of the main dwelling rather than as a county-level inventory of agricultural land tenure. This Census reports that nationally 61.3% of households owned their main dwelling while 38.7% rented. For agricultural land, the legal framework recognises public, community and private land, with private land commonly held as freehold or leasehold. In Nakuru, the county planning framework reports >95% of land as private freehold or leasehold. In Narok, community, public and private tenure coexist. Group ranches have been subdivided into individual holdings, while unregistered community lands remain. Rural private land is predominantly freehold, while urban private land includes freehold and leasehold. In Baringo about 45% of land is reported as private/freehold and 55% as communal (Chepkochei et al., 2025; Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), 2019).

These differences have implications for climate resilience. Secure tenure may encourage farmers to invest in terracing, agroforestry, water harvesting, soil restoration and tree planting with confidence in benefits returning over several years (Ostrom, 2009; Lal, 2015). Conversely, fragmentation, insecure tenure or uncertain communal land rights may discourage long-term investments (Ostrom, 2009; Chepkochei et al., 2025). In pastoral areas, however, communal tenure can support mobility and collective management of grazing resources. Consequently, the relationship between tenure and resilience is not that private ownership is superior to communal tenure; security, legitimacy and the quality of tenure governance are critical (Ostrom, 2009).

Our central proposition is that climate adaptation and conservation science remain incomplete if the physical dimensions of climate change are addressed while overlooking its cumulative psychosocial consequences. Repeated climate shocks initiate a reinforcing feedback loop: agricultural losses generate collective trauma; trauma shapes coping behaviour; these behavioural responses contribute to environmental degradation that further amplifies vulnerability to future shocks (Folke et al., 2016; Reed, 2008).

Recognising this loop reframes ecosystem degradation as a consequence of social-psychological responses to environmental change, not only as a biophysical process. A major implication of this is that trauma-informed climate governance should become integral to conservation practice, embracing ecological restoration, psychosocial recovery, indigenous and local ecological knowledge, and participatory governance.

Kenya’s rift valley: a living example of climate-trauma interactions

Kenya’s Rift Valley offers a compelling illustration of how climate variability, agricultural vulnerability, environmental degradation, and collective trauma interact. Maize-dominated, rain-fed agriculture remains the region’s primary livelihood strategy, making household food and income highly dependent on rainfall timing and distribution (Morton, 2007; Nicholson, 2017). Historical records show that climate-related disasters have become markedly more frequent since the early 1990s. Shortened recovery periods leave farmers unable to rebuild productive assets before the next disturbance, producing chronic rather than temporary vulnerability (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; World Bank, 2021).

The 1991–1992 and 1999–2001 regional droughts severely affected pastoral and mixed farming systems in Baringo, Laikipia, and Narok. High livestock mortality and emergency coping strategies followed, including distress sales, migration and expansion into marginal land (National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), 2023). The 2008–2009 drought coincided with a major food-price crisis. The 2011 Horn of Africa drought extended these impacts regionally (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2022). The severe 2020–2023 drought struck before many communities had recovered from earlier shocks (National Drought Management Authority (NDMA), 2023; Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), 2023).

Flooding has produced sudden, highly visible destruction. The devastating 1997–1998 El Niño floods destroyed infrastructure and displacing thousands (Anyamba et al., 2001). Further flooding in 2018 and 2024 similarly damaged farms, schools, and settlements while increasing waterborne disease. Destructive landslides in West Pokot and Elgeyo-Marakwet in 2019 also illustrate how climate variability and environmental degradation interact, bringing deaths, displacement, and disrupted social networks and sense of place (Petley, 2012). These recurring events arguably heightened collective trauma rather than being resolved between episodes.

Climate risk also varies spatially (Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), 2023; World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 2023). Semi-arid counties (e.g. Baringo, Laikipia, Narok) face frequent drought and water scarcity. Higher-rainfall counties (e.g., Trans-Nzoia, Uasin Gishu) face delayed rainfall onset, intense precipitation, and erosion. Intermediate counties (e.g. Nakuru, Elgeyo-Marakwet) face compound risks. Adaptation strategies must therefore be tailored to local conditions rather than applied uniformly, with conservation interventions addressing root causes rather than symptoms (Moser and Ekstrom, 2010).

Degradation of the Mau Forest Complex, growing pressure on water catchments, declining soil fertility, and habitat fragmentation have progressively reduced ecosystems’ capacity to buffer these extremes, deepening the reciprocal relationship between ecosystem decline and human vulnerability (Jebiwott et al., 2021; Calder, 2007; Montgomery, 2007). The situations described here are not Rift Valley-specific or Kenya-specific. Similar cyclical patterns of drought, flooding, displacement, and degradation are increasingly evident across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and indigenous and rural communities in North America (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; UNFCC, 2021).

The climate–trauma–environment feedback loop

Our central proposition that recurrent climate shocks generate a reinforcing socio-ecological feedback loop, with environmental change and collective human trauma amplifying one another, begins with environmental extremes - rising temperatures, greater rainfall variability, delayed rainy-season onset, and more frequent extreme precipitation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; Nicholson, 2017). These affect rain-fed agriculture through crop failure, declining pasture productivity and livestock mortality (Morton, 2007; Nicholson, 2017). At the personal level, these impacts may be experienced as ecological grief or climate anxiety. Collectively, these losses can translate into collective trauma, chronic uncertainty and eroded social cohesion (Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018; Alexander et al., 2004). Repeated events become embedded in collective memory and shape expectations about the future (Erikson, 1976; Alexander et al., 2004).

Collective trauma, then, informs behavioural responses that directly affect ecosystem management with immediate survival prioritised (Hobfoll, 1989). Trauma also weakens institutional performance, reducing trust and participation in the collective action that sustainable resource management requires (Ostrom, 2009; Moser and Ekstrom, 2010). The resulting environmental degradation (e.g. reduced infiltration of rainwater, accelerated soil erosion, sedimentation and diminished flood regulation), further weakens ecosystem resilience (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Calder, 2007), leaving communities more vulnerable to the next climate shock and completing the loop.

These considerations can disproportionately affect different segments of society; age, level of ability, and ethnicity, for example. Gender is a clear example, with women disproportionately affected given their responsibilities for wood and water collection, childcare and other domestic work (Boserup et al., 2007).

The feedback loop framework helps explain why adaptation investments sometimes fail to produce sustained resilience. They address symptoms rather than the underlying feedback mechanism, leaving trauma unresolved, social fragmentation and institutional distrust intact (Moser and Ekstrom, 2010). It points toward trauma-informed climate governance as a means of interrupting this cycle by integrating psychosocial support, participatory governance, cultural healing, indigenous knowledge, and ecosystem restoration into adaptation programming. Restoration would be additionally understood as a process through which communities rebuild social cohesion, agency and hope. This aligns with broader climate-policy emphasis on transformative adaptation that addresses structural and institutional drivers of vulnerability rather than incremental adjustments (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022).

This climate-trauma-environment feedback loop model has broader relevance across Africa, and small-island and indigenous communities worldwide, offering conservation science a framework for integrating ecological restoration with the human dimensions of environmental change.

Towards trauma-informed climate governance

Trauma-informed climate governance (Table 2) treats adaptation as a psychosocial process rather than a purely technical one, recognising that successful adaptation to changing climatic conditions depends on restoring psychological, cultural, and institutional capacities that enable collective environmental stewardship (Moser and Ekstrom, 2010; Reed, 2008). In Table 2, we provide examples of potential governance responses to climate stressors, such as extreme weather events and their direct/indirect impacts.

Table 2. Indicative climate stressors, collective trauma responses, and governance implications for 15 counties in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

Key terms defined within the Perspective text.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is the first pillar of this model - reducing exposure to climate shocks through agriculture that considers impending extreme weather events, e.g. through introducing drought-tolerant varieties; conservation agriculture; mulching; crop diversification; efficient water harvesting (Lipper et al., 2014; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2013). However, CSA adoption depends on farmers’ confidence in future production. Adaptation programs must therefore address cumulative trauma alongside promoting new technologies (Lipper et al., 2014).

Ecosystem restoration is a second pillar. Crucially, participatory restoration rebuilds social cohesion and collective action. Community-led reforestation and watershed committees create shared goals that function simultaneously as ecological recovery and psychosocial healing (Reed, 2008).

Indigenous and local ecological knowledge (ILEK) provides a further pillar, by informing adaptation and reaffirming cultural continuity in landscapes disrupted by degradation (Berkes, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013; Whyte, 2017). Climate risk financing and social protection (e.g., index-based insurance, contingency funds, adaptive social protection) reduce the financial pressures that push households toward environmentally destructive coping strategies (Barnett and Mahul, 2007).

Finally, livelihood-specific psychosocial recovery (e.g., through community dialogue, peer support, customary conflict resolution, women’s and youth groups, culturally appropriate healing practices) should be recognised as a legitimate component of adaptation policy, rebuilding the trust and collective capacity that long-term stewardship requires (Cunsolo et al., 2020).

Kenya’s Climate Change Act (2016), National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP III, 2023-2027), National Adaptation Plan (NAP, 2015-2030), and National Drought Management Authority provide a strong institutional foundation. However, they currently emphasise physical adaptation and disaster risk reduction over psychosocial well-being. Explicitly incorporating collective trauma and appropriate metrics into these frameworks at national, county, community, and regional scales (e.g., through IGAD’s regional drought management strategies) would enhance their effectiveness.

Priorities for future research include standardising gendered indicators for measuring collective trauma within climate vulnerability assessments; interdisciplinary work bridging ecology, psychology, sociology, and public health; longitudinal studies of cumulative climate impacts; and comparative research testing whether trauma-informed governance (managing institutions and policy in a way that recognises people’s trauma), produces more durable conservation outcomes than conventional approaches (Folke et al., 2016; United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), 2026; Steffen et al., 2015).

Discussion and conclusion

As documented in this Perspective, Kenya’s Rift Valley demonstrates that the consequences of climate variability extend far beyond reduced agricultural productivity or ecosystem degradation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2022; World Bank, 2021; Morton, 2007). Repeated droughts and floods initiate socio-ecological processes that simultaneously affect livelihoods, environmental integrity, institutional effectiveness, and collective psychological well-being. Understanding these processes requires conservation science to broaden its focus beyond biophysical systems to include the cumulative effects of collective human trauma on environmental decision-making and ecosystem resilience.

Collective trauma is not just an outcome of climate change but also an active driver of environmental degradation. The climate-trauma-environment feedback loop demonstrates how repeated disturbances shape behavioural and institutional responses that in turn alter ecological systems. Coping strategies such as deforestation, overgrazing, and cultivation of marginal land provide immediate relief but accelerate degradation and increase exposure to future shocks. Unresolved collective trauma can therefore contribute indirectly to the very conditions that intensify future vulnerability.

This differs from a technology and infrastructure emphasis in adaptation literature, with communities regarded simply as passive recipients of change. It extends existing work on ecological grief and solastalgia (Alexander et al., 2004; Albrecht et al., 2007; Cunsolo and Ellis, 2018) by emphasising the shared social experiences and constructed meanings that emerge when communities repeatedly confront environmental loss. These include transformations in social cohesion, cultural identity, governance, and collective capacity, in addition to individual distress. It also implies that socio-ecological resilience should be understood to include communities’ ability to maintain hope, cohesion, and collective agency, not only ecosystem capacity to absorb disturbance (Folke et al., 2016). Ecological restoration and psychosocial recovery are mutually reinforcing rather than independent processes (Reed, 2008; Folke et al., 2016).

Similar cycles of recurrent drought, flooding, degradation, and displacement are documented across Africa, where effective adaptation likewise depends on strengthening social institutions, cultural values, and community relationships alongside technical and financial investment. Trauma-informed climate governance offers a framework for integrating ecological restoration with social healing across diverse contexts. Existing Kenyan policy instruments provide a foundation that could be strengthened by explicitly incorporating psychosocial dimensions of vulnerability, indigenous knowledge, and community-led restoration (Whyte, 2017; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2021).

We believe that conservation science stands at an important crossroads. As climate change accelerates and environmental disturbance becomes increasingly entangled with humanitarian crises, conservation cannot protect species or restore ecosystems in isolation from the communities that inhabit those landscapes. Ecosystem health and people’s well-being are inseparable components of resilient socio-ecological systems.

By conceptualising climate variability, environmental degradation, and collective trauma as gendered, livelihood specific components of a single reinforcing system, this Perspective offers a framework for understanding persistent climate vulnerability. It identifies pathways toward transformative resilience; one in which restoring landscapes and healing communities are recognised as mutually dependent processes and where psychosocial healing can help restore the trust required for people to become partners in conservation rather than opponents of it.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Chiara Bragagnolo, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil

Reviewed by: Desmond Manatsa, Bindura University of Science Education, Zimbabwe

Kritish De, Independent Researcher, Hooghly, India