Research report makes strong case for pastoralism

The future of pastoralism in Kenya is grim as things currently stand, but this system is the most efficient way of using the country's arid and semi-arid lands, and should be better supported by government, donors and relief agencies, according to research undertaken in North Eastern Province.

Given the declining condition of livestock herds, the increased frequency of drought, and the growth and development of administrative centres in the province, "the future of pastoralism is grim", a report released last week stated.

However, livestock - especially browsers like sheep, goats and camels - were well suited to areas with lower rain yields, in which agriculture is an unattractive alternative, according to Christopher Pratt, the academic who examined early warning systems and coping strategies in the province.

Crops cannot migrate if rains fail, and other forms of income generation are extremely limited, which was an additional cause for concern in itself, said Pratt, whose research was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Tufts University in the US.

Yet, people earning their livelihoods through pastoralism had suffered high animal losses and reduced recovery capacity (in the recent drought, still affecting parts of Kenya), he said. "Action needs to be taken by external agencies to promote viable livelihood strategies among these groups. This type of strategy will help to circumvent long-term issues of dependency."

The distribution of relief, including food relief, in administrative centres encouraged vulnerable pastoralists to leave their small stock behind or take it into over-stressed environments - both of which endangered their future livelihoods, according to the report.

Relief agencies would do better to move distribution out of administrative centres, forestalling migration to those areas by pastoralists who had not enough livestock to survive independently of food aid, it said.

These agencies also needed to reconsider the welfare of pastoralists when they devised emergency or development activities, in order to "support mobility, access to resources and traditional leadership whenever possible," the report stated.

This had not been the case in past interventions, it said, when traditional practices and sustainable ways of living had been adversely affected by programmes which increased the number of human settlements in the province, crowded out wet-season grazing areas and restricted livestock access to permanent water sources in dry-season grazing areas.

Urbanisation, development processes, formal education and changing religious ideologies had all contributed to the decreasing practice of traditional early warning systems and coping strategies, according to the research, carried out in cooperation with the Feinstein International Famine Center and Kenya's Northern Region Development Agency.

Regional administrators must "make some difficult decisions at to whether future watering points and administrative centres should be discouraged to promote traditional grazing management practices and livestock conditions," Pratt stated.

The current formal education system failed to take into account children's roles in herding livestock or the reality of their lives in its content and accessibility, he said. Similarly, the government might do well to trade some of the control it derived from appointing local administrators for gains in community participation that it could get from having administrative chiefs elected.

Development programmes which focused on the strengths of the region: promoting livestock support services and markets, as well as limited agricultural potential in riverine areas, were needed, the research report stated. This could boost the Kenyan economy as a whole - by encouraging exports to regional livestock markets in the Near East, for instance, it said.

Improving pastoralist livelihoods would help improve these communities' access to financial and produce markets, increase incomes and encourage savings, and help these marginal, vulnerable communities to diversify - thereby increasing their coping potential in times of emergency such as drought, it added.

"It is important that these communities have as many choices as possible in their overall survival and livelihood strategies" for sound economic, developmental and environmental reasons, according to Pratt.

"Investing in pastoralism is good not only for pastoral communities but for Kenya as a whole," he added.