The Kenyan Environmental Soldier Program: Military Actors and Climate Mitigation

Esther van 't Veen, Netherlands Defence Academy (Netherlands)

Since 2003, the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) have implemented the Environmental Soldier Program (ESP), planting billions of trees to mitigate climate change. The research that I seek to present was developed in collaboration with the National Defence University of Kenya (NDU-K) and draws on over 45 interviews with KDF personnel to explore how the KDF has come to engage in climate mitigation activities. Focusing on participants’ lived experiences within ESP and propagating their voices, the research highlights (military) identity transformation as a lens for understanding how military organizations integrate new responsibilities while sustaining operational effectiveness. Additionally, the study critically engages with scholarship on the militarization of climate change mitigation, especially concerns about civil-military power balances. In a broad sense, it engages with the question: what role can and should military institutions play in the context of climate change?