Land and Environment

Land and Environment
Theme
Pillar	Governance

Land and Environment (Kiswahili: Ardhi na mazingira) is a theme of the Governance pillar. It covers who holds coastal land and on what terms, long-running grievances over how that land was taken and allocated, and the coast's forests, mangroves and shoreline in a changing climate. Kenya's Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission found in 2013 that the coast had "the largest single concentration of landless indigenous people" in the country. Kenya's mangrove forests, about 61,271 hectares, lie along its 536-kilometre coastline.

What this page is for

If you know of a land case, a conservation effort, a climate project or a dataset about the coast's land and environment, please add it here with its source, and record where people disagree.

Land and Environment on the coast today

The Commission traced coastal landlessness to colonial land titling and post-independence allocations, and described its forms as squatting on government land, absentee landlords, tenants-at-will, idle land, mass evictions and lack of access to the sea. It concluded that landlessness is mainly responsible for the high levels of poverty in parts of the region, and that hotels and other plot owners have blocked roads and beaches used by fishing communities. A 2018 household survey cited in the Kwale CIDP found that 32 per cent of residents held title deeds and about 55 per cent had no legal document for their land, and Mombasa reports that issuing 1,076 titles raised the share of its land with ownership documents from 30 to 45 per cent.

The shoreline is exposed to the sea. The national climate plan estimates that 267,000 Kenyans will be at risk from coastal flooding by 2030 and that a 30-centimetre rise in sea level could submerge parts of Mombasa and 17 per cent of coastal areas. A 2026 study in Frontiers in Marine Science, reported by the Daily Nation, classed about 210 km of the coastline as highly vulnerable to sea level rise, with Mombasa Island and the Kilifi-Malindi corridor among the areas most at risk.

Lamu holds 61 per cent of Kenya's mangroves, Kilifi and Kwale 14 per cent each, Mombasa six and Tana River five, according to the State Department for Forestry, and national mangrove cover is falling by 0.7 per cent a year. In Gazi Bay, Kwale, the Mikoko Pamoja project has protected 117 hectares of mangroves and sold more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon credits for over KES 6.2 million. Inland, the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests, ten forest sites spread over some 200 km of the coast, were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2008. On waste, Mombasa generates about 1,000 tonnes of solid waste a day, collects 600 tonnes and recycles 5 per cent.

Plans and policy

The Constitution establishes the National Land Commission and gives it the task of investigating present or historical land injustices and recommending redress. The National Climate Change Action Plan 2023-2027 groups its actions into eight priority areas, including water, fisheries and the blue economy, and forestry, wildlife and tourism, and expects coastal erosion and flooding in Kwale, Mombasa, Kilifi, Tana River and Lamu.

At county level, Kwale passed a Climate Change Act in 2022 that created ward climate change planning committees, and prepared a County Climate Change Action Plan for 2022-2027; Tana River has likewise enacted a climate change law with a county Climate Change Fund. The Lamu CIDP 2023-2027 commits to issue title deeds for all surveyed land, revoke illegally acquired titles, resettle indigenous squatters, give community titles where communities live and work, and encourage residents to lease rather than sell land to investors. Under the national Financing Locally-Led Climate Action programme, the third round of county resilience grants for 2025/26 allocated grants of KES 130,809,885 to Kwale, KES 125,656,479 to Tana River, KES 90,076,104 to Taita-Taveta and KES 58,667,924 to Lamu.

Who is involved

The National Land Commission handles historical land injustice claims, and the State Department for Forestry publishes the national mangrove figures. The National Environment Management Authority licenses major projects, as it did the Lamu coal plant before a tribunal revoked that licence. The National Treasury runs the climate resilience grants with the World Bank and the governments of Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. In Kwale, community beach management units run mangrove rehabilitation with support from the county, the Kenya Red Cross, Base Titanium and others. Civil society voices include the Kenya Land Alliance on land and Save Lamu on the environment. See also Civic Engagement and Blue Economy.

Open questions

Who should own the ten-mile strip? In Mombasa, families living as tenants-at-will on land claimed by heirs of the former coastal rulers face eviction threats; Nominated Senator Miraj Abdillahi has asked the national government to act, and Nagib Shamsan of the Kenya Land Alliance wants the land returned to residents and fraudulent titles cancelled, while the landlords claim ownership through ancestral rights. In March 2024 The Standard reported that the National Land Commission had rejected a claim that more than 10,000 such tenants were victims of historical land injustice.

Is adaptation money reaching the most exposed shores? Mombasa Island and the Kilifi-Malindi corridor are among the most vulnerable stretches of coast, yet the 2025/26 schedule of performance-based resilience grants lists no grant for Mombasa and, for Kilifi, only the county's own KES 104,000,000 contribution. The press release does not say why.

Development or conservation? Lamu residents objected to the proposed coal plant over pollution and the destruction of mangroves, and the National Environment Tribunal revoked its licence in 2019 for lack of public participation. In November 2025 the Environment and Land Court upheld that decision on appeal by Amu Power.

Coverage the plan expects

• historical land injustices
• climate adaptation
• coastal erosion
• forests and mangroves
• waste management
• land tenure and title deeds

Projects

A project page joins this theme by naming it as the theme in its infobox. To start one:

Sources

• Report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, Volume IIB, TJRC, 2013
• National Climate Change Action Plan 2023-2027, Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, 2023
• Kwale County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027, County Government of Kwale, 2023
• Lamu County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027, County Government of Lamu, 2023
• Mombasa County Integrated Development Plan 2023-2027, County Government of Mombasa, 2023
• FLLoCA County Climate Resilience Investment Grant III allocations, The National Treasury, 2026
• Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests, UNESCO World Heritage Centre
• Hundreds of Mombasa tenants face threat of eviction by absentee landlords, The Star, 2024