3.1.3. Livelihood Issues

The study established that basic service provision in Mathare is either extremely poor or entirely non-existent. The supply of clean water, and collection and disposal of waste are left to private contractors. Dumping into the Mathare River, along the riverbank, and on the sides of the road is rampant. In a focus group discussion, residents complained of lack of clean and safe water for drinking and their daily use. Although the Mathare River runs through the informal settlement, pollution is high [34]. Di fferent types of household refuse, raw sewage, and solid wastes are dumped into the river, thereby making the water unfit for human consumption. It should be noted that the livelihoods of people downstream in the lower Eastern and Coastal regions of Kenya depend on water from the Nairobi river basin (made up of Mathare River, Nairobi River, and Ngong River) for their daily use (Figure 4) [23].

**Figure 4.** River connects landscapes in di fferent counties (Source: authors).

Pollution of the Mathare River, therefore, a ffects people within and outside the informal settlement. This necessitates a cross-border collaboration of actors in all the landscapes where the river traverses if rehabilitation and conservation approaches are to be e ffective [36].

#### *3.2. Findings from The Follow-Up Expert Interviews under AfriCLP Program (2019)*

From the interactions with Mathare residents and interviews with key informants, the researchers identified the following as constraints to establishing multi-stakeholder engagemen<sup>t</sup> and cross-sector collaborations:

#### 3.2.1. Lack of Consensus

It became apparent that di fferent agencies had di fferent views concerning the same issues. Some of these views from the utility provider (KPLC) and the utility price regulator (EPRA) contradicted each other. Whereas KPLC maintained that it was impossible to provide lower electricity tari ffs for communities living in urban informal settlements, EPRA maintained that it was possible to provide lower tari ffs for those residents. Our engagemen<sup>t</sup> with community members revealed that residents were willing to ge<sup>t</sup> legal connections, but only if the cost of connection and monthly power bills were affordable. This lack of consensus between the two key actors in the energy sector hinders collaborative efforts towards enhancing the transition to clean energy in informal settlements.

#### 3.2.2. Mistrust between Residents and Government Actors

The residents lacked faith in governmen<sup>t</sup> actors and utility providers. They expressed doubt on whether the governmen<sup>t</sup> would act in the community's interest. On the other hand, the county and national governments continually fail to recognize the legitimacy of informal settlements. The 6th principle of Sayer et al.'s '*Ten Principles of an Adaptive Landscape Approach*' states that trust among stakeholders is crucial in creating negotiated and transparent change logic [24]. Trust is important in structuring mutual relationships. It can influence public support for policies, enhance productive cooperation and promote open dialogue among stakeholders [37,38]. Existing mistrust between governmen<sup>t</sup> actors and residents of Mathare informal settlement is a barrier to collaborations aimed at developing an e ffective governance model for the Mathare landscape. This mistrust exacerbates security risks. The utility provider cited insecurity and rampant attacks on its o fficials during work visits to the informal settlement as one of the major hindrances to provision of electricity in Mathare. The researchers conclude that there is need to invest in understanding the needs of energy consumers and build a relationship of trust particularly between informal settlement dwellers, government, and service providers. Creating a platform for governmen<sup>t</sup> o fficials, experts, and community members to co-design solutions together is one way of dealing with trust issues and enhancing security.

#### 3.2.3. Cultural, Social, and Economic Barriers

Residents' perceptions and financial constraints hinder them from embracing a technology switch to cleaner energy. This was attributed to the cost of legal connection and the cultural belief that charcoal is best for cooking certain traditional meals. This is in line with Sayer et al.'s argumen<sup>t</sup> that multiple stakeholders form their objectives di fferently [24]. Therefore, conflict or lack of understanding of the underlying factors that shape the stakeholders' preferences and objectives hinders any meaningful governance, clean energy dialogues, and cross-sector collaboration [14].

#### 3.2.4. Lack of Awareness at the Sector and Community Levels

This emerged as a barrier to cross-sector collaboration. Knowledge transfer and awareness creation are crucial in ensuring e ffective multi-stakeholder engagements [18,24]. The rights and responsibilities of stakeholders need to be clarified and well-understood for e ffective collaboration to take place [8,24,25]. Some of the stakeholders did not know much about the other actors. In one of the workshops, a governmen<sup>t</sup> agen<sup>t</sup> involved in policy formulation confessed to having never visited Mathare informal settlement before. On the other hand, some of the residents were not aware of the governmen<sup>t</sup> agencies and their mandate. The CoDEC project researchers created a platform for both parties to engage and learn about each other.

#### **4. Analysis of CoDEC and AfriCLP Results through a Landscape Governance Framework**

Analysing clean energy transition through a landscape lens requires an understanding of how the two are related. Energy transitions and landscape governance can be understood from ecological, social-cultural, political, and environmental dimensions. In this section, we use the CoDEC and AfriCLP findings to demonstrate how clean energy transition can be understood using a landscape governance framework. We start by creating a link between energy transitions and different dimensions of landscape governance.

## *4.1. Ecological Dimension*

Landscapes provide the context for the lived experiences of humans and their communities. It is where ecological and social histories are shared [39]. Here, the creation of and participation in shared knowledge and development occurs [40]. Effective landscape approaches need to be based on an understanding of the natural-ecological characteristics of the area [25,41]. This allows a fully integrated and effective framework to be developed. This is to say that formal and informal urban dwellings in Sub-Saharan Africa can perform satisfactorily if the larger environment functions properly as a living space. This is largely determined by how communities within the respective landscapes manifest themselves outwardly and how they interact with their living spaces [21]. County and national governments need to acknowledge that despite their segregation, informal settlements do not thrive in isolation of the landscapes around them [8,42]. What happens in Mathare affects other landscapes and natural resources. For example, lack of access to electricity compels residents to rely on charcoal and firewood for their cooking and heating needs. As a result, (1) Use of charcoal contributes to deforestation and land degradation due to excessive tree logging [43,44]; (2) burning of charcoal leads to the release of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, benzene, and other hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to climate change [18,45,46]; and (3) the smoke emitted during combustion of charcoal in poorly ventilated houses increases the health risk of the users [17,18,46]. Transitioning to clean energy and increasing access to electricity will, therefore, benefit forest landscapes, help in the fight against climate change, and contribute towards improving the livelihoods of informal settlement dwellers.

## *4.2. Socio-Cultural Dimension*

Part of what makes us human is that, unlike other animals, we can philosophize about our place in the world and can experience existential crises [40]. Sense of place and socio-cultural identity are crucial factors in landscape governance [25]. The socio-cultural dimension of landscape approaches is philosophised through various cultural practices, beliefs, and heritage [1,47,48]. Culture impacts people's choices and how they use or add value to natural resources [24]. The multi-level transdisciplinary co-design methodology enabled the CoDEC researchers to assess monetary and non-monetary factors that shape residents' choice of fuel and what prompts them to prefer charcoal despite the negative impacts associated with it [17,18]. It was discovered that charcoal is culturally viewed as a better fuel for cooking certain traditional foods [17,18]. Therefore, changing the community's energy behaviour and land use practices requires one to understand the culture and the factors that inform their decisions and preferences [24,39]. This approach is important in collaborative stakeholder engagements because it creates a platform for respondents to conceptualize why others do what they do. Contestations may arise, but solutions arrived at after deliberations are usually more inclusive and stand a higher chance of acceptance at the community level [49–51].

#### *4.3. Political Dimension*

In policy and planning, landscapes are often understood as administrative territories that are geographically bound and subject to formal territorial and institutional policy and planning interventions [25,41,52]. However, managemen<sup>t</sup> approaches that are implemented in isolation do

not suffice [1]. Lessons drawn from the CoDEC and AfriCLP projects point to the need to expand the scope and make formal and informal institutions work across the borders to ensure genuine integration. The role of landscape approaches is to provide a framework to integrate practice and policy for different land uses in each area [1]. A lot of learning and knowledge co-creation is involved to achieve integration [10]. Through co-design workshops, academics create a platform where policy and planning actors can clarify rights and responsibilities relating to land and resource use to community stakeholders [24]. In Mathare, this remains elusive due to lack of land ownership rights and security of tenure and mistrust between the governmen<sup>t</sup> agents and the local community [17,18]. Arguably, the fact that residents live in constant fear of eviction undermines their ability to support or implement long-term sustainable landscape approaches [14]. The study concludes that policy and planning initiatives have failed to devise sustainable energy and landscape governance approaches for the Mathare landscape.

### *4.4. Environmental Dimension*

It has been argued that the analysis of 'energy' as a generic concept fails to capture differences in energy use [17]. This means that policies that are only aimed at shifting overall consumption towards electricity and away from traditional fuels are unable to adequately address the clean energy needs of the urban poor. It would be incorrect to infer that increased electrification will automatically lead to lower consumption of charcoal. However, this coupled with effective environmental policies and landscape approaches may significantly reduce the consumption of charcoal and firewood [43]. For example, in 2017 the Government of Kenya imposed a ban on tree logging and charcoal production in public forests. The aim of this charcoal ban policy was to increase the country's forest cover to at least 10% and reduce the widespread use of charcoal [43,53,54]. The ban led to an increase in the cost of charcoal across the country [17,18,44]. Market logic dictates that an increase in the cost of charcoal will drive consumers to switch to alternative sources such as electricity [43]. However, this logic failed to take effect in Mathare, as the majority cannot afford legal connection because of their meagre earnings at an average of Ksh. 18,000 per household [17]. The moratorium on logging and lack of affordable alternatives to charcoal led residents to switch to sawdust as a fuel [18].
