Hustling for Rights: Political Engagements with Sand in Northern Kenya

In the arid and semi-arid lands of Northern Kenya, young people are struggling to establish sustainable livelihood strategies in a context of prolonged and more frequent drought periods reducing pasture productivity, and a growing pressure on land due to new political and economic interests in the region (see, e.g., Fratkin 2013). Such altered livelihood strategies often constitute novel ways of relating to the environment, and sometimes catalyse altered forms of environmental agency. To people belonging to sedentary pastoralist communities in Laikipia North, one of the few possible livelihood options, apart from livestock rearing, is the harvesting and selling of sand