By Faith Anene and Bradley Nandasaba, Kakamega
For women working in Kakamega’s gold mining fields, climate change is no longer a distant environmental threat. It arrives with the first heavy rain.
The pits fill. Paths disappear beneath mud. Ore becomes harder to reach. The women wait, because without ore, there is nothing to crush, wash or process and without processing, there is no money.
For a mother, a lost day at the mine can mean an empty cooking pot. It can mean school fees pushed to another day, a child waiting for a meal, or a debt carried a little further into tomorrow.
Then the rain retreats and the heat arrives. Under a punishing sun, women bend for hours over stones and muddy water, searching for tiny flecks of gold. Their backs ache. Dust settles on their faces.
Still, they keep working. Because poverty does not wait for good weather. Artisanal and small scale mining in Kakamega is what puts food on the table puts for most women in Kakamega County. But climate change is not just changing the weather. It is changing how women survive.
The result is a dangerous intersection of climate stress, poverty and environmental degradation. Chemicals used in gold processing create additional occupational health hazards.
Patrick Ligami, chair of the Kakamega County Miners Association and the county Artisanal Mining Committee, estimates that women make up about 62 per cent of the mining population in Kakamega, particularly in ore processing.
A British firm, Shanta Gold Kenya Limited, has uncovered gold deposits worth Ksh683 billion in the region. Over a decade ago in 2013, an exploration by Acacia Mining, also a British firm, estimated the corridor holds at least 1.31 million ounces of gold deposits along the Lirhanda corridor, valued at Ksh171 billion, with up to 60 per cent concentrated in Kakamega.
He says women dominate processing because men typically extract ore from shafts before handing it over for crushing and washing.
Mining, he adds, provides a more lucrative source of income than casual farm labour for many rural women. “You will find that it is preferred by the women other than going to the farm and earning 250 shillings per day or 300. In mining they can make between Ksh1, 000 to Ksh3, 000 per day.”
But Ligami says climate change is threatening this livelihood as rain disrupts mining, while heat, water exposure, chemicals and degraded land add to occupational risks.
Women also face prolonged exposure to water while washing and processing ore, often working in a bent position for much of the day.
“The women who are doing the process, most of the day, their limbs, the legs and the hands, are constantly in water and in a bend position,” he says.
Their exposure to the changing climate is therefore tied directly to their livelihoods.
“When it rains heavily, we cannot go to the mining sites,” says Janet Ingosi, a gold miner from Rosterman in Lurambi Sub County. “We cannot get the stones to process, and that means we have no income.”
A British firm, Shanta Gold Kenya Limited, has uncovered gold deposits worth Ksh683 billion in the region. Over a decade ago in 2013, an exploration by Acacia Mining, also a British firm, estimated the corridor holds at least 1.31 million ounces of gold deposits along the Lirhanda corridor, valued at Ksh171 billion, with up to 60 per cent concentrated in Kakamega.
Gold mining fields of Kakamega’s are found in five sub-counties namely Ikolomani, Shinyalu, Lurambi, Khwisero, and Butere, often handling mercury with their bare hands.
A workplace becoming hotter
Marylyn Okwisa, another gold miner from Bushiangala in Ikolomani constituency, describes a body that seems to change with the working environment.
“At home, I feel healthy. But when I get to the mining site and spend hours working under the heat, my body begins to give in. I get tired, I get headaches, and my back hurts. Sometimes I take a painkiller and keep working. I cannot afford to stop.”
For miners whose earnings depend on completing the day’s work, stopping is not always an option.
The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies heat and chemical exposure among occupational hazards in artisanal and small-scale gold mining and highlights particular risks for women of reproductive age.
WHO says mercury can harm the nervous, digestive and immune systems and can damage the lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes. It also identifies the developing fetus and young children as particularly vulnerable to mercury exposure.
The Minamata Convention identifies artisanal and small-scale gold mining as the largest source of mercury emissions and releases globally and calls for countries to reduce and, where feasible, eliminate mercury use in the sector.
Isaac Maindi, a senior occupational safety and health officer with the Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health Services, says climate change is amplifying existing occupational hazards in artisanal mining.
He points to chemical exposure, extreme heat, heavy rainfall, disease risks and poor workplace conditions as overlapping threats.
He calls for better protective equipment, safer technologies and controls that eliminate or reduce exposure to hazardous substances.
When rain becomes a health hazard
The relationship between climate change and mining becomes particularly visible around water.
In Shitoli village, heavy rains can turn mining waste into a moving hazard, carrying wastewater, sludge and chemical residues towards homes, roads, farms and rivers.
For Joyce Khakaba, the danger feels painfully close. She recalls an incident when overflowing water from a leaching plant broke through a wall and entered nearby homes. “The water overflowed and broke through the wall. It entered the homes,” she says.
The mushrooming of leaching plants has deepened these fears. Some are not properly fenced, leaving stagnant pools of potentially contaminated water exposed to people and animals. The water may contain chemical residues from the leaching process, posing risks to human health, livestock and the wider environment.
“You can see the water is no longer normal. It changes colour and remains there,” says Joyce. “When the rains come, everything moves towards us. In a changing climate, rain can carry mining’s hidden hazards into the heart of the community.
UNEP says artisanal and small-scale gold mining can contribute to land degradation and contamination of soil and water. Mercury released into the environment can also enter aquatic food chains.
Peter Mathea, an environmental safeguards coordinator in Kakamega County, describes the paradox confronting mining communities as too little usable water during dry periods and too much destructive or potentially contaminated water during heavy rains.
Women often carry the largest household burden when water becomes scarce.
They are frequently responsible for collecting water for cooking, washing and other domestic needs.
The land left behind
Mining changes more than the pits. It changes the land around them.
Trees are cleared. Soil is excavated. Waste accumulates. Underground water pathways are disturbed.
During heavy rains, residents say abandoned shafts can become unstable and collapse.
Brilliant Mwavishi, a resident of Rosterman, describes soil erosion and dangerous open pits around mining areas.
Rehema Wekulo, from Ikolomani, wants abandoned shafts backfilled and rehabilitated so that damaged land can eventually return to agricultural use.
She also calls for tree planting and agroforestry to restore vegetation and protect water catchments.
Her argument is straightforward – land damaged by mining should not be abandoned to become another source of vulnerability.
UNEP has identified land degradation, deforestation and pollution among environmental concerns associated with poorly managed artisanal and small-scale mining.
For women, environmental degradation can have a direct economic consequence.
When mining income disappears, farming is often one of the few available alternatives.
But if mining has degraded agricultural land or affected water sources, that safety net is weakened.
However, Mining can pay school fees. It can buy food. It can keep a household going. And for widows and women supporting children, abandoning it without an alternative may simply not be possible.
Rain can halt mining, drought can weaken farming, floods can damage infrastructure, while extreme heat makes work harder and environmental degradation erodes alternative livelihoods for women.
The result is a cycle in which the women most dependent on mining may also have the fewest resources to absorb climate shocks.
From the mining pit to the policy table
This reality emerged during a deliberative process conducted by Girls to Women Organization (GtoW) across Lurambi, Shinyalu and Ikolomani, Kakamega’s main gold-mining areas.
The process began with co-designing, followed by mini-publics and a Citizen Assembly, giving women, girls, people with disabilities, community leaders, officials and other stakeholders space to share experiences and develop practical climate responses.
“Climate change is not producing new health challenges. It is actually exposing what we have been ignoring. It is an accelerator to the health risks that are already within the community,” said Wambui.
According to Audrey Bigeti, GtoW programmes officer, the initiative created a safe space for residents to deliberate on mining, climate change, environmental degradation and health risks.
The exercise involved 120 participants, including 108 women, 41 young people and 10 people with disabilities. It generated 34 recommendations, with 25 prioritised for consideration by the Citizen Assembly.
Among the priorities were safer chemical management, tree planting, backfilling abandoned shafts and access to safe water.
Mercy Kalemela, GtoW director, said inclusion was deliberate because women and people with disabilities experience mining risks differently. Participants also called for leaching plants to be located away from homes and water sources.
Climate change is accelerating an already heavy health burden
For Florence Wambui Nguni, Collaborator Organisation and Independent Consultant during the Mini Publics said that climate change is not necessarily creating entirely new health threats in Kakamega’s gold-mining communities but making existing ones harder to ignore.
“Climate change is not producing new health challenges. It is actually exposing what we have been ignoring. It is an accelerator to the health risks that are already within the community,” said Wambui.
She says policymakers should respond to these overlapping risks rather than treating them separately.
Public-health interventions, she argues, should combine community education, advocacy and access to quality healthcare, while ensuring medicines and health workers are available in mining communities.
But better policy will require better evidence. Ms Wambui wants the County government Kakamega to collect continuous data on miners’ age, sex, socioeconomic circumstances, health exposures and access to healthcare, rather than relying on one-off assessments.
“For sustainability purposes, I would definitely ask the county government to collect data in a longitudinal format, not just a spot-on and move to the next thing.”
“The communities have the solutions. The government has the financial muscle to implement some of the recommendations that have been given by the community, especially the women.”
Kakamega’s women gold miners face a changing climate
Ama Yembe, a Demo. Reset mentor supported by Extituto de Política Abierta, which backs deliberative practices such as mini-publics, says climate change is making livelihoods more precarious.
“The women bear the brunt of gold mining. They are also the carers of their families and, in many cases, the main support system,” she says.
The vulnerability becomes sharper because much of the work operates on daily earnings. Heavy rainfall can flood mining areas and prevent access to ore, while prolonged dry spells can disrupt production and water availability.
“When you look at the issues of rainfall, drought and natural disasters occurring, it becomes a problem for them,” Yembe says.
Yembe says policymakers should respond by strengthening enforcement of mining and environmental laws, improving awareness among miners and supporting safer technologies and practices.
But she says climate policy must also give affected communities a meaningful role in decision-making.
“Wherever decision-making is going on, the people in the community should be on the table,” said Yembe adding, “The women are not asking for mining to disappear. They are asking for a safer way to survive it.”
That participation, she argues, should deliberately include women, girls and people with disabilities, groups whose experiences are often missing from official data and public policy discussions.
Extituto de Política Abierta – ROLE
For Melissa Velez Arias, the conversations revealed another layer of vulnerability where women are living with the consequences of climate change while often having the least influence over decisions that shape their livelihoods.
“We think that women and girls are not only actors affected by these challenges. They also have daily life experiences that can help us understand how these problems are affecting the entire community,” she says.
Velez Arias, project coordinator for Demo. Reset at Colombia-based Extituto de Política Abierta, says the three mini-publics created a rare space for women and girls to speak openly about the challenges confronting their communities.
She says climate and mining policies should not be shaped solely through technical assessments, arguing that the experiences of people working and living in affected areas provide important evidence for decision-makers.
“We think that women and girls are not only actors affected by these challenges. They also have daily life experiences that can help us understand how these problems are affecting the entire community,” she says.
For Velez Arias, meaningful participation means moving beyond inviting residents to public meetings and ensuring their experiences inform decisions.
“The conversation needs to be continuous between decision-makers and the community, and we need to guarantee that the community’s voices are heard in the future,” she says.
The approach, she says, is not about asking women to abandon mining, but about creating space for communities, government and other stakeholders to negotiate safer and more sustainable ways of protecting livelihoods while responding to climate change.
County Government
Anthony Munanga, director Environment at the County Government of Kakamega said the devolved will consider recommendations from residents of Shinyalu, Ikolomani and Lurambi as it reviews I the Kakamega County Climate Change Action Plan 2023-2027 and address environmental risks linked to gold mining, according to.
Bill Silingi, the Chief Officer for Environment and Natural Resources said the citizen forum had generated useful recommendations on challenges facing mining communities, including mercury contamination, collapsing shafts, flooding and loss of vegetation.
Silingi said the recommendations would provide additional data for the county as it engages miners and national agencies responsible for regulating the sector.
Under the Mining Act, 2016, the county government’s key role includes public participation, he said, adding that initiatives by Girls to Women and DEMO. Reset were helping strengthen community participation in mining governance.
Peninah Mukabaneh, the County Minister for Water, Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change said the devolved unit is already advanced in implementing the climate change action plan, but said there would be an opportunity to incorporate the forum’s recommendations during future amendments.
However, she cautioned that implementing the recommendations would require additional funding and collaboration with national agencies and development partners.
