**6. Importance of indigenous local institutions for natural resource management**

Key informants were identified in consideration of gender balance, resource endowment and location in the landscape in order to examine the role of indigenous institutions for natural resource management in the study area. Diversity of indigenous local institutions identified is shown in **Table 4**.

The changes in importance for some of the local institutions shown in **Table 4** were also assessed. For example, rainmakers, devil cleansing, fortune-tellers and sacred areas for rituals are all becoming less important due to modern religion (Christianity and Islam),


**Table 4.** Typology of indigenous local institutions for natural resource management in the highlands of western Kenya.

influx of outside cultures and government policies. The above changes do not significantly across the study sites. Traditional leadership structures have been replaced by a formal system under the devolved County government structure, where leaders are democratically elected. Form the foregoing, it can be seen that a variety of institutions in the study area are involved in natural resource management. For successful engagement of local communities, there is need to recognize and work with local institutions. This is because their role as custodians of local knowledge [20], mobilizing collective action [74, 75] and connecting members of different communities [76] are all fundamental to effective natural resource management.
