Suchergebnisse

The Borana Plateau is an important region for Ethiopia— but it is challenged by very serious problems. Both the human and livestock populations are growing while poverty is increasing for the majority of pastoralists. The rangeland also shows signs of extreme degradation including gullying, bush encroachment, and high rates of pond siltation. This brief summarizes points made at a pastoralist conference held for 71 participants during December, 2014, in Yabelo town in the Borana Zone. The purpose of the conference was to chart a way forward for the Boran society to better address problems. The conference included speakers from the pastoral community, policy-making realm, private sector, and research organizations. It was concluded that the pastoralists must begin to better manage grazing, rehabilitate the land, and diversify livelihoods. Both the traditional leadership and the government must work together in this process, but it is the people themselves who have the power to make these changes.

Recognizing that community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approaches have had mixed success in pastoral rangelands, this paper compares five case studies—two from Kenya, two from Ethiopia and one from Tunisia—to identify aspects of social-ecological context that affect the implementation and success of CBNRM in pastoral settings. Data for each case was collected following a common protocol. Among the characteristics that emerged from our study as important were socio-political and biophysical characteristics of the wider landscape within which the community's rangeland territory is located and the extent to which that territory is circumscribed by some combination of other land uses and land tenure types, major political boundaries, and physical landscape features. The analysis of these cases suggests that where pastoralist communities coexist in large, open rangeland landscapes, rather than a narrowly community-based approach, natural resource management interventions need to be explicitly multi-level and horizontally flexible.