Abstract
Dryland livestock production systems are changing in many parts of the world, as a result of growing human populations and associated pressure on water and land. Based on a combination of social and natural science methods, we studied a 30-year transformation process from pastoralism to a livestock-based agro-pastoral system in northwestern Kenya, with the overall aim to increase the understanding of the ongoing transition towards intensified agro-pastoralist production systems in dryland East Africa. Key to this transformation was the use of enclosures for land rehabilitation, fodder production, and land and livestock management. Enclosures have more soil carbon and a higher vegetation cover than adjacent areas with open grazing. The level of adoption of enclosures as a management tool has been very high, and their use has enabled agricultural diversification, e.g. increased crop agriculture, poultry production and the inclusion of improved livestock. Following the use of enclosures, livelihoods have become less dependent on livestock migration, are increasingly directed towards agribusinesses and present new opportunities and constraints for women. These livelihood changes are closely associated with, and depend on, an ongoing privatization of land under different tenure regimes. The results indicate that the observed transformation provides opportunities for a pathway towards a sustainable livestock-based agro-pastoral system that could be valid in many dryland areas in East Africa. However, we also show that emergent risks of conflicts and inequalities in relation to land, triggered by the weakening of collective property rights, pose a threat to the sustainability of this pathway.
Highlights
Changing livestock production systems in East African dryland Drylands cover around 40 % of the world, host nearly one third of its human population and 50 % of the world’s livestock and have traditionally been used and managed by pastoralists through communal or common property rights-based land tenure systems (McDermott et al 2010; United Nations Environment Management Group 2011)
Aim and objectives This paper presents results from a multi-disciplinary analysis based on the Livestock Revolution trajectories (Delgado et al 1999) that explores the role of enclosures in a 30-year transformation process of land, livestock and livelihoods in dryland West Pokot, Kenya
We did find significant increases in top soil C content, we cannot conclude that there was a change in total carbon storage since the bulk density of the soil from different depth and enclosure ages varied very much, and the sampling procedure of this study, with six replicates and each replicate being the bulk of three subsamples, might not have detected such changes
Summary
Changing livestock production systems in East African dryland Drylands cover around 40 % of the world, host nearly one third of its human population and 50 % of the world’s livestock and have traditionally been used and managed by pastoralists through communal or common property rights-based land tenure systems (McDermott et al 2010; United Nations Environment Management Group 2011). Nyberg et al Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice (2015) 5:25 of land use that is mismanaging dryland resources and being responsible for land degradation through overgrazing of communal rangelands (Ayantunde et al 2011) Against this historical backdrop, dryland areas face a multitude of challenges, including climate variability and change, an accelerated demand for livestock products due to human population growth, continuing urbanization and changing food preferences, limited possibilities of increasing livestock productivity, and increasing pressure from the expansion of agriculture into grazing lands (Catley et al 2013; McDermott et al 2010; Mortimore et al 2009; Sumberg and Thomson 2013; Thornton 2010). The extent to which the observed transition processes constitute a pathway to sustainable intensification of drylands is an intensively debated question (e.g. Beyene 2014; Catley et al 2013; Greiner et al 2013; Schmidt and Pearson 2016)
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