The Role of Nature Based Solutions in Enhancing Resilience of Agropastoral Social Ecological System in the Face of a Changing Climate in Narok County, Kenya

Narok County lies within the African tropical savanna range-lands, which experiences unpredictable, severe, and frequent floods with prolonged droughts due to climate change. The predominant Maasai community are traditionally pastoralists. However, they are quickly adopting agro-pastoral practices as a response to the changing ecological challenges. The community has embraced diverse livelihood strategies and land uses that have significantly changed the savanna ecosystems in land cover and vegetation composition due to agropastoral activities despite their lack of capacity to adjust to the effects of climate change. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are highly relevant for achieving social-ecological resilience in specific local Social Ecological Systems (SESs). However, a general understanding of the existing NbS interventions in Narok County, their effectiveness and potential benefits to the agro-pastoralists was lacking. This study therefore created visions for the future related to land use change, and examined the possibility of NbS enhancing resilience in the SES of Narok county. The study used a participatory scenario analysis tool (KESHO) using different Land Use Land Cover Change (LULCC) maps of the selected periods between 1989 and 2024 to determine possible NbS pathways through a workshop with the communities, actors involved in environmental conservation and disaster management, and those supporting agriculture in Narok County. The secondary data sets included land-use activities measured through remote sensing technology, and the Landsat datasets sourced from USGS Earth Explorer and Sentinel images high resolution from Copernicus Satellite. Visual images were then created by modelling different land cover scenarios. The workshops created a shared future thinking and strategic foresight to achieve a holistic planning and development approach to deal with issues of food insecurity, biodiversity loss and climate change risks. A shared system understanding of the local dynamic key drivers of change was developed, and recommendations for adaptation pathways to address failures were formulated. The results give insights into the effectiveness of NbS-interventions across grasslands while targeting vulnerable pastoral communities in the Global South. Such knowledge has a significant potential in addressing the combined crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. This outcome will strengthen and upscale adoption of NbS interventions.