Stepping away from herds of cattle, subsistence farms, and other responsibilities at home, roughly a hundred Kenyan villagers traveled overnight by bus from the Tana River Delta to Nairobi in February 2011 for a hearing at the national high court. The claimants declared that the lack of a “comprehensive land use master plan” infringed on the rights of the region’s people, and called for the prohibition of further land and resource development until such a plan was negotiated.

The villagers were not permitted to attend the court’s closed-door hearing; instead, they filled the stairway and halls outside as a show of support. They also didn’t expect a resolution, given a verdict wasn’t due for months. Yet their journey was not for nothing: through this and other actions, the villagers won an impromptu audience with Kenya’s vice president, and online and print media outlets in Kenya and beyond reported on their concerns.

These events provoke several questions: Why did an obscure court case in a remote, pastoral community draw high-level and international attention? How did villagers make their claims about the delta resonate with a wider audience, both in Kenya and around the world?

In a new paper in Global Environmental Politics, I argue this local dispute took on global significance due primarily to one of the planned outputs of several projects in the delta: biofuels.

Global Contestation

In the early 2000s, biofuels – that is, bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants and plant oils – were heralded as a “silver bullet” solution for climate change, rural development, and energy security. Here was a renewable source of energy that could supplant fossil fuels and at the same time provide new markets to struggling farmers. This optimism didn’t last, however, and views on biofuels split several times over.

When commodity prices spiked in 2007, critics accused biofuels of diverting food crops into energy streams in a competition of food versus fuel. Some research suggests expansion of biofuel production in the United States and European Union was responsible for three quarters of global food price increases between 2002 and 2008. By 2009, growing agricultural investments across the Global South led to accusations that biofuels were driving “land grabs.”

As these narratives emerged, political support for biofuels wavered. In Kenya, these global discourses intersected with local developments in the Tana Delta.

The Tana Delta has been shaped by a history of political and economic marginalization, along with territorial reorganization by colonial powers and the state. The region is home to a number of ethnic groups, with two – the predominantly pastoralist Orma and the mainly agriculturalist Pokomo – making up almost 90 percent of the population. These groups’ histories are steeped in mythology and conflicting narratives, particularly about who arrived first in the delta, and, therefore, to whom the land belongs.

Further, corporations, the government, and international NGOs have proposed an array of development projects for the region, with varying degrees of success. From prawn farming and irrigation to titanium mining and conservation, the Tana was a full and contested landscape well before biofuels arrived on the scene.

Tana villagers have initiated two court cases in response to these development efforts. The first, filed in 2008, challenged a deed for a public-private sugar plantation. In 2009, when the court ruled in favor of the developers, villagers filed a second case with a wider focus on land use planning. “Since there is a scramble for the Tana Delta,” the petition reads, “the local people are likely to lose their right to the land on which they have lived and the resources on which they have relied upon since time immemorial.” The petition further states the villagers’ “right to life and the environment have been violated.” Although neither court case focused on biofuels, villagers strategically harnessed the language and resources of the growing anti-biofuels movements.

Identities, Economies, Histories

In the Tana, biofuel projects theoretically offer agriculturalists – such as the Pokomo – opportunities for jobs and new markets, but threaten pastoralists – such as the Orma – by compromising access to grazing lands and water sources. This link between ethnic identities and livelihoods helped catalyze protests and build alliances through the 2000s. Particularly from 2009 onwards, many Orma spoke out against biofuels, allying themselves with environmental and land rights organizations.

Yet the divide between pastoralist and farmer is not as stark as it often seems. Many herders tend small gardens and agriculturalists sometimes keep livestock, both as longstanding adaptations to a variable ecosystem and in response to environmental changes caused by past political decisions, such as the damming of rivers.

For biofuel projects, economic motivations are not always concurrent with ethnic identities. For example, Orma villagers belonging to private ranches (semi-communal land-holding systems) stood to gain from leasing land to a Canadian company for a Jatropha plantation and often split their allegiances.

Further, past experiences with state authorities complicate responses to development projects in the region. While agriculturalist Pokomo often support biofuels plans, this extends mainly to projects initiated by private corporations, not the government, thanks to a history of resentment against the state and its agencies for perceived persecution on wildlife and river development issues.

During the first court case filed by the villagers, and with renewed efforts following the second, locals who worried about development projects drew attention by linking up with international organizations concerned with biofuels. They spoke with journalists, activists, and researchers, contributed to online forums and virtual networks, and attended protests and gatherings, drawing global attention.

Villagers’ concerns did not always align with the global biofuels movements. At the global level, campaigners had to focus on simple messaging and high-impact slogans, where attitudes at the local level were more concerned with specifics (sugarcane or Jatropha curcas? is intercropping possible? will land be fully enclosed or left open for grazing?). Most of the Tana representatives advocating for participatory development did gain value from linking the court case to biofuels though, whether or not they actually opposed them.

The global discourse – conversations linking biofuels to human rights, colonialism, hunger, and environmental conservation – amplified the villagers’ collective voice, and the issue became an effective focusing point for broader, historical struggles in the delta.

A Ruling

Was it just chance that launched the Tana Delta into the global spotlight and kept it there for several years? A reading of the complex cultural, historical, economic, and ecological context of the delta suggests not. The legal battle over development plans in a remote region of Kenya gained international attention when villagers linked their local grievances to global biofuels debates, drawing on land and human rights narratives, identity claims, and environmental concerns.

When the Kenyan High Court finally ruled on the villagers’ second petition in 2013, its decision validated those villagers who sought a broader stage for their grievances. Justice Ngugi called for the development of short-, medium-, and long-range land use plans “with full participation of the community as well as the agencies and other stakeholders who have interest in the Tana Delta.” Until such participatory land use plans are in place, development projects in the delta have been halted.

The High Court decision does not guarantee that the delta’s land will be allocated and governed in ways that satisfy Tana villagers – particularly because participatory planning cannot necessarily overcome conflicting claims of belonging and ownership in the delta. Still, the decision to mandate a truly consultative process provides opportunities for negotiating multiple interests and achieving shared goals. Beyond biofuels and Kenya’s coast, these dynamics reveal more generally how complex webs of economic, cultural, governance, and environmental pressures can play out amidst rapidly growing global market sectors, with implications for understanding energy and resource debates around the world.