Opportunities and Innovations in Participatory Budgeting for Climate Change Adaptation in Makueni County

Abstract

The inclusion of citizens in decision-making and especially in management of public funds has increasingly become an integral component in governance and policy formulation. There are many public needs competing against limited resources and negative effects on livelihoods attributed to climate change. Makueni county has been lauded as a model county in implementing a public participation framework from the village level to the county level. This model provides an opportunity to implement innovative solutions driven by the citizens to address climate change. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to identify the opportunities in the participatory budgeting process in Makueni; and to build the adaptive capacity of the communities on climate change. The study will be anchored on Participatory Democracy Theory and will adopt mixed methods and collect data through analysis of secondary data from participatory budgeting and county participatory climate risk assessment and the county budgets. Qualitative data will be collected through expert interviews and focus group discussions. The study will use multi-stage sampling to identify participants across the 30 wards, the development committees who form the structures for public participation and ward climate change committees who will participate in the focus group discussion. Data analysis will be done through coding and thematic analysis for qualitative data and descriptive statistics for quantitative data to guide findings, discussions and recommendations.