Pastoralist community perceptions of land-use changes in southern Kenya

Resource-use changes in rangeland ecosystems have triggered ecological, social and economic dynamics that often have adverse effects on pastoralists. The study “Community perceptions on spatio-temporal land use changes in the Amboseli ecosystem, southern Kenya”, published in Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice (2016 6:24), applied an integrated approach using local knowledge and spatial technologies to assess the long-term changes in pastoral resources and their implications for pastoralist livelihoods. Local people perceived reduction in grazing land to be the main change in pastoral resources in the last 40 years. The decline was reported to be more pronounced under sedentary (50%) and semi-nomadic (47%) land uses than in nomadic pastoral land use (30%). This trend was attributed to increase in cultivation and settlements (by 26% and 17%, respectively, in sedentary; and by 17 and 12%, respectively, in semi-nomadic systems), resulting from changes in land tenure. The use of participatory resource mapping provided an entry point for eliciting community perceptions of problems facing them in order to guide local-level resource planning and action.

Posted on 30 April 2017 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition