WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
Pastoralists adaptation in the context of wider changes in livelihoods and land tenure rights
Environmental and social-economic dynamics continue to threaten pastoralist adaptation, particularly in Africa. Despite the heterogeneity of pastoral groups, informed by context-specific ecological, geographical, ethnic, and social-political dynamics, policymakers, academics, and practitioners have the tendency to view pastoralism as a homogeneous entity. This assumption has informed policy and practice on adaptation strategies in the past. Little attention has been made, if any, to the existing socio-economic stratification and changing land tenure rights among pastoral groups. Pastoral groups in Kenya, such as those in Kajiado County present a case study of the deep- seated heterogeneity between pastoralist households in terms of land tenure (referring to access, use, and ownership of land and its associated resources). Policies on pastoralist adaptation to climate change seldom pay attention to these disparities, yet these are fundamental to ensuring the resilience of pastoral society in the future. The socio-economic heterogeneities influence pastoralists’ access, use, and ownership of resources and their adaptive capacity towards climate variability, as witnessed in Kajiado County.
Tenure changes in Kajiado County, home to the pastoral Maasai community, have a deep historical basis. Prior to the late 19th century, pastoralists used these and other spaces in open-access tenure arrangements. From the late 1800s until the mid-1950s, these range-lands were under colonial control, which paved the way for communal ownership and access in the 1960s. Between the 1970s and 1990s, the majority of the land, including Kajiado County, was used under group ranch tenure arrangements that rapidly became subdivided into individual properties, which heralded the influx of increasing land demands amongst non-Maasai individuals, corporations, and land-buying companies, taking advantage of the lucrative land market thanks to a rapidly expanding Nairobi Metropolis. Notably, therefore, the last 150 years have witnessed massive land tenure changes that, coupled with the increasing effects of climate change on the Kajiado pastoral society, present both challenges and opportunities for adaptation. Nowadays, at least in the last two decades, pastoralists in Kajiado County have varying mechanisms of accessing and using land, as mediated by differences in wealth as well as cultural norms that influence gendered resource ownership and entitlement. Privatization and the land market in Kajiado County have left poorer households with little space for pasture, while richer families (with large land holdings) use the proceeds from land sales, leases or crop cultivation to support their livestock adaptation. Evidently, wealth , in whatever form, also influences resource accumulation and diverse adaptation trajectories. Support for climate change adaptation therefore, must take these factors into account rather than addressing pastoralist adaptation as an isolated action. There is a need for climate change adaptation interventions to be understood in the context of wider changes in land tenure and local livelihood dynamics.
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