Let the pastoralists roam freely, says expert

Ethiopia’s 10 million pastoralists should be allowed to roam freely with their livestock and not be "hemmed in by fences" if their livelihoods are to be sustained, a leading ecologist said on Wednesday. Prof Ian Scoones told government officials and pastoral experts at a meeting in the capital, Addis Ababa, that mobility was a critical factor for pastoralists and their livestock. He warned that policies which restricted movement would curb the productivity of pastoralists, which in turn could make them more dependent on aid. His comments come as the Ethiopian government prepares to settle the pastoralists as a way of tackling massive dependency on foreign aid to feed the country's population. It is expected that once they are settled, the pastoralists can have better access to services like health, education and markets. They are to be voluntarily settled along river basins and irrigated farming sites by the Shebele river in the Somali State and the Awash River in Afar State, under a three-year strategy launched in 2003 by the federal affairs ministry. A task force has been formed to examine ways of improving the lives of the pastoralists who inhabit the Somali, Oromiya and Afar states of Ethiopia. Dr Muhammad Hagos from the pastoralists' division of the federal affairs ministry said the task force would help reverse the marginalisation many pastoralists now face. The government has stressed that a "separate programme needs to be formulated" for pastoralists to take into account their lifestyles. At the moment, the pastoralists, who are generally nomadic, look after an estimated 11 million goats, camels and cattle. Scoones, an academic from the UK-based Institute for Development Studies, called for "new thinking" to ensure policy changes in range management of pastoralist lands. "Range managers and development projects have often tried to hem pastoralists in," he said. "But removing that capacity for movement reduces productivity in pastoral systems." He rejected arguments that livestock numbers in the country were too great for the land, saying such arguments were based on the scenarios in countries like Australia and the US. In Africa, he added, livestock numbers increased and decreased with droughts, but never reached the "carrying capacity" where there would be too many animals for the land. Scoones said countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, where millions of pastoralists live, experience erratic rainfall and droughts. "Those kinds of assumptions in Africa were found wanting," he said. "A lot of the assumptions behind the failure of previous pastoral development projects were embedded in the transfer of these inappropriate ideas." "Invest you efforts in those key resources, and those are the areas where the returns are high... where pastoralists will want to invest," he stressed, adding that "key resources" were often areas where conflict could erupt, and so policy makers should target them to ensure they were protected.