Introduction

On the one hand, these projects epitomize the struggle for ‘energy futures’ between carbon-based and renewable energies (Boyer 2014, Love and Isenhour 2016). On the other hand, they bring substantial ancillary infrastructures (Greiner and Klagge 2024) to these remote rural areas, such as roads and water pipelines. Beyond such concrete interventions, they also bring promises of future development and prosperity, epitomized, for example, by visions of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport Corridor (LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority 2016). However, none of the three energy projects currently under consideration is intended for local uses: oil is exported, and electricity generated from wind and geothermal power is fed into national grids that largely do not serve areas of production. Following Argent (2016), Irarrázaval and Arias-Loyola (2021) and other authors, such regions can be described as ‘resource peripheries.’ We conceive of resource peripheries as places of extraction that are geographically remote from long-established population centres, but are ‘drawn together in an integrated web of physical infrastructure, foreign direct investment flows and corporate hierarchies’ (Argent 2016: 805). Tsing (2003) and others (e.g. Li 2014, Watts 2018, Dressler 2017) have used the term ‘resource peripheries’ interchangeably with ‘frontier’, with additional qualifiers such as ‘resource’, ‘extractive’, or ‘capitalist’ frontier. We understand frontiers as a spatial and temporal process of the expansion of state and corporate power into formerly peripheral rural areas, often with the aim of rendering them into resource peripheries. This contribution deals with the processes of creating a resource periphery in northern Kenya. In view of controversial debates about the future of pastoral communities associated with this region (Greiner 2022, Lind et al. 2020, Mosley and Watson 2016), we use the term ‘frontiers’ to describe a process whose outcome is not yet certain.

The scholarly literature on northern Kenya does not share a uniform assessment of the developments outlined above. While some authors note the reinforcement of existing centre-periphery relations (Hashimshony Yaffe and Segal-Klein 2023), others see a renegotiation of such relationships (Orr 2019), complicated by new patterns of scalar governance (Klagge et al. 2020). These assessments also vary because the developments in northern Kenya were initiated in the midst of political transformations, most notably, the adoption of the 2010 constitution and the associated decentralisation of political processes, through devolution of power that occurred in 2013. Against the background of historically weak state penetration in northern Kenya, projects for energy extraction are developed within an institutionally volatile regulatory environment (Lind 2018). Regional governments have been implemented as new players and as intermediaries between local communities and the national government (Cheeseman et al. 2016). This has led to disputed constituency and county boundaries, particularly in those areas where land-based resources are at stake and potential economic benefits are anticipated (Greiner 2013). To make matters more complicated, national energy policies and regulations change frequently, leading to inconsistencies and uncertainties that are not only disadvantageous for investors and project developers, but also for coordination at different levels of government (Keshavadasu 2023).

The energy projects under consideration bring about both opportunities as well as significant threats to the livelihoods of affected pastoralist populations (Mkutu and Mdee 2020, Mosley and Watson 2016). Mobile livestock farming remains prevalent throughout the region, but the last few decades have witnessed a number of dramatic changes, most of which go far beyond the projects considered here (Anderson and Bollig 2016). Among these are droughts and deteriorating environmental conditions, rapid population growth, sedentarization, land-use intensification, indigenous commodification of land, and increasing contestation of territorial boundaries (Catley et al. 2013, Lind et al. 2020). These factors have led to the constriction of communal pastures. Formerly open rangelands are increasingly fragmented (Galvin 2009), and local communities’ relations to land and landed property are also witnessing profound changes (Greiner 2016, Korf et al. 2015).

Within that context, this contribution explores the implications of different energy-related investments and accompanying infrastructural projects for rural populations. We address the following question: How and by whom are different energy futures, including their impacts on local livelihoods, negotiated among and across different actors and scales? In particular, we focus on scalar dimensions of negotiations (i.e. scalar politics) over the distribution of benefits derived from wind, oil, and geothermal energy projects. In addition, we explore how the frontier context, including the devolution of political power, affects the forms and outcomes of such negotiations.

Although there is a good deal of literature on LTWP (Achiba 2019, Cormack and Kurewa 2018, Drew 2017), oil extraction (Enns and Bersaglio 2015, Johannes et al. 2015, Agade 2017), oil and LTWP (Schilling et al. 2018), and geothermal development (Greiner 2020, Greiner et al. 2023, Klagge et al. 2020, Klagge & Nweke-Eze 2020, Mahamoud Abdi et al. 2024), as well as a number of contributions sketching challenges and conflicts arising from these investments more broadly (Lind 2018, Lind et al. 2020, Mosley and Watson 2016), there have been no systematic attempts to examine local impacts of these three energy projects. No study has analysed these projects in terms of scalar politics, frontier dynamics, and the concept of future-making, by which we refer to strategies, practices, and activities aimed at bringing about specific futures, visions, and aspirations (Müller-Mahn 2020).

The remainder of this chapter is organised as follows: Section 2 links the frontier concept with future-making and scalar politics. Section 3 introduces the northern Kenyan context, while Section 4 describes our methodology and case studies on wind, oil, and geothermal energy. Section 5 systematically compares future-making activities among stakeholders for the different projects and infrastructures, including how conflicts are negotiated. The conclusion summarises our findings on the scalar dynamics of future-making in our case studies.