  We present a chiral ${\bar K}N$ interaction model that has been developed and
optimized in order to account for the experimental data of inelastic ${\bar
K}N$ reaction channels that open at higher energies. In particular, we study
the effect of the higher partial waves which originate directly from the chiral
Lagrangian, as they could supersede the role of high-spin resonances employed
in earlier phenomenological models to describe meson-baryon cross sections in
the 2~GeV region. We present a detailed derivation of the partial wave
amplitudes that emerge from the chiral SU(3) meson-baryon Lagrangian up to the
d-waves and next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. We implement a
nonperturbative unitarization in coupled channels and optimize the model
parameters to a large pool of experimental data in the relevant energy range
where these new contributions are expected to be important. The obtained
results are encouraging. They indicate the ability of the chiral higher partial
waves to extend the description of the scattering data to higher energies and
to account for structures in the reaction cross sections that cannot be
accommodated by theoretical models limited to the s-waves.
