The CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies (NPS) for Food, Land, and Water Systems Transformation seeks to explore and suggest recommendations to build policy coherence, integrate policy tools, and respond to crises on food, land, and water issues. To achieve these goals at the country level, the initiative works closely with ministries responsible for agriculture, food, land, water, natural resources, and planning. The purpose of this study was to undertake an analysis of selected policies relating to food, land, and water systems for coherence. The study identified 27 policies and strategies in food, land, and water (FLW) sectors and interviewed 20 key informants from 18 organizations. Eighteen of the 27 policies and strategies were in agriculture, two on livestock, two on fisheries, two on land, and three on water. Using a Likert Scale, the policies were scored for content against the five CGIAR Impact Areas, and then the score on each impact area was to generate Sankey Diagrams. These CGIAR Impact Areas align very well with Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Kenya’s priorities in food, land, and water systems as elaborated in the Agriculture Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy, the Big Four Agenda, and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA). The analysis showed that 24% of the Kenyan FLW policies addressed Youth, Gender, and Equity impact areas; 23% addressed Environmental Health and Biodiversity; 19% addressed Climate Adaptation and Mitigation; 17% addressed Nutrition, Health and Food Security; and 17% addressed Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods and Jobs CGIAR Impact Areas, respectively. The analysis further showed Normative Coherence in that every policy positively impacted several areas. At the same time, different policies complemented each other. Conversely, there were inconsistencies between some policies, and trade-offs between different policies were also observed. For instance, Kenya's land policy promotes the subdivision of large farms into smaller plots, leading to agricultural land fragmentation. This has had negative consequences for agriculture, as smaller plots of land are less efficient and less productive than larger farms. On the other hand, the water policy aims to conserve water resources and protect them from depletion and pollution, which contradicts increased food production, which entails increased water consumption. The other incoherencies were in three areas: a) catchment protection and environmental health; b) social exclusion in the access to water, land use, and tenure; and c) lack of consensus on national outcomes across sectors.
Year of publication | |
Authors | |
Geographic coverage | Kenya |
Originally published | 21 Oct 2024 |
Related organisation(s) | CGIAR - Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers |
Knowledge service | Metadata | Global Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food Systems | Food systems transformationliterature review |
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET) | Capacity buildingsample surveywater policypolicymakingland use |