Beyond Extraction: Governing Sustainable Mining, Resource Justice, and Community Resilience in Turkana County, Kenya

Turkana County, in Kenya's arid north, sits atop two extractive frontiers that are advancing far ahead of the institutions meant to govern them: artisanal gold mining at Lomeguro/Naduat, Locheremoit, Kalomwae, and Moruongor, and the commercial oil development now proceeding in the South Lokichar Basin of Turkana East and South. This paper synthesises publicly available government, media, county, and academic sources to examine the governance gap that has accompanied this dual extractive economy and the socioeconomic , environmental, and security consequences that follow from it. Drawing on resource curse theory, common-pool resource governance, devolution and subsidiarity theory, and environmental justice frameworks, the paper documents recurring patterns across the mining sites: fatal shaft collapses linked to the absence of appropriate equipment and safety standards, unregulated mineral pricing and trading, weak county revenue and royalty capture, contested land governance around conservancies, and infrastructural, educational, and social strains on host communities. It situates Turkana's experience within comparative artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) formalisation literature from Ghana and Tanzania, and within Kenya's own Mining Act, 2016 and its devolved royalty-sharing architecture. The paper's principal contribution is the Integrated Sustainable Mining Governance Framework (ISMGF), a ten-pillar model linking governance, environmental sustainability, community well-being, economic inclusion, security, technology, local content, transparency, climate resilience, and intergenerational equity. The paper concludes with a set of practical, sequenced policy recommendations for the Turkana County Government, the national government, and development partners, including a proposed Turkana Artisanal Mining Authority, designated mineral trading centres, a county mineral cadastre, and an environmental restoration fund financed throughproduction levies.