Cyclic droughts, flooding and collective trauma: an environmental feedback loop to inform governance and socio-ecological resilience in Kenya’s rift valley

Climate change is recognised as a multidimensional crisis affecting ecological integrity, food systems, and human well-being. Attention has been given to biophysical and economic consequences of climate variability. Less emphasis has been placed on cumulative psychological and social impacts. Collective trauma is a critical but largely overlooked dimension of climate adaptation and conservation science. Using Kenya’s Rift Valley as an illustration, we suggest that recurrent droughts and floods have created a self-reinforcing socio-ecological feedback loop where environmental degradation, livelihood losses, and collective trauma interact to reduce ecosystem resilience and adaptive capacity. Drawing on evidence from historical climate records; agricultural trends; contemporary literature on ecological grief, social-ecological resilience, and trauma-informed governance, we propose that repeated climate shocks influence not only agricultural productivity but also human behaviour, institutional responses, and environmental decision-making. Communities experiencing cumulative trauma frequently adopt short-term coping strategies that accelerate land degradation, thereby increasing vulnerability to subsequent climate shocks. We argue that climate adaptation should move beyond technical interventions alone to incorporate psychosocial recovery, indigenous and local ecological knowledge (ILEK), participatory ecosystem restoration, and community-centered governance. Recognising collective trauma offers an opportunity to transform climate adaptation from a reactive process focused on disaster recovery into a proactive strategy that restores ecosystems, strengthens community resilience, and enhances human well-being. We conclude that trauma-informed climate governance represents an important frontier for conservation science and should become an integral component of resilience-building strategies in climate-vulnerable landscapes across Africa.