Exploring Alternative Livelihood Opportunities for Mountain People as an Adaptive Strategy to Changing Climate: A Case of Chyulu Hills, Kenya

Kenya’s forested upland catchment areas also referred to as water towers continue to be threatened by global warming and unsustainable use of forest provisioning ecosystem services leading to habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and declined livelihood sources among communities. Forest-adjacent communities including those in Chyulu Hills are dependent on forest resources for their livelihood including firewood and building material collection, grazing, and honey and medicinal plant harvesting, among others. It is therefore fitting to promote alternative livelihood sources for forest-dependent communities in order to ease extractive pressure in catchment forests, thus sustaining the continuous provision of ecosystem services. Over time, efforts to promote the adoption of alternate livelihood streams have been undertaken to control degradation of mountain forests, but intrinsic and extrinsic factors have served to constrain realization of their potential to reduce dependency on catchment forests for community livelihood. Analysis of individual alternative livelihood intervention will give insight on which designs and approaches of alternative livelihood source provision will yield optimal results, thereby assisting in conservation efforts of mountain forests in Kenya and elsewhere. Of the livelihood options discussed in this paper, conservation livelihood and adoption of carbon trading has direct impact in uplifting livelihoods of local mountain communities while enhancing conservation, whereas empowerment programs function to cultivate positive attitudes to build sustainable conservation efforts of mountain ecosystems. An integration of both direct and indirect approaches hold more rewarding potential in building resilience among mountain communities against adverse impacts of climate change.