Pastoral Mobility: A Review

Abstract

Introduction Mobility is often regarded as an important characteristic of pastoral societies and their ways of production in Africa. However, the interpretation of the rationale and importance of pastoral mobility changes along with the various discourses and depending on the professional background of the researcher. While the positive perception of mobility is relatively new among researchers of drylands, this is not a new line of thought among social scientists studying pastoralists (e.g. Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980, Stenning 1957). Both anthropologists (e.g. Dyson-Hudson 1966, Evans-Pritchard 1940, Nicolaisen 1963, Stenning 1959) and others studying pastoral societies (e.g. Gallais 1967, Johnson 1969) have pointed to the flexible strategies employed by pastoralists. In the late 1980s, a new understanding of drylands dynamic gained importance and led to the so-called 'new rangeland paradigm' which has been called the 'state-and-transition' paradigm (Westoby et al. 1989) or 'instability-but-persistence' paradigm (Warren 1995). The first papers concerned dryland functioning, but soon implications for pastoral management, and hence pastoral mobility, were included (e.g. Ellis and Swift 1988). This meant that concepts such as degradation and desertification were reinterpreted and it has now been demonstrated that 'sustainable resource management' is far from equivocal. This review will show how pastoral mobility is understood in the context of range ecology, the focus being on how pastoralists' perceptions can add to this understanding. Pastoral Mobility Within the New Rangeland Paradigm The 'new rangeland paradigm' has been thoroughly analysed in three seminal books: Range Ecology at Disequilibrium (Behnke, Scoones and Kerven 1993), Living with Uncertainty (Scoones 1995a), and Managing Mobility in African Rangelands (Niamir-Fuller 1999a). While the first book is concerned mainly with the ecological aspects of dryland ecosystems, the second elaborates on management implications for pastoral production systems, and the third emphasises a particular aspect of pastoral systems, namely mobility. According to the new rangeland paradigm, drylands are considered disequilibrial (changing from one state to another) due to strong external controls, e.g. droughts, fires, or insect attacks. These external controls strongly affect primary production and thus livestock density. As a result, dryland productivity is controlled mainly by the highly variable precipitation; because livestock seldom reaches densities high enough to influence vegetation productivity, precipitation is the principal factor controlling inter-annual vegetation dynamics (Coppock 1993). The perception of pastoral mobility within the new rangeland paradigm can be summarised as follows: pastoral mobility is highly appropriate in variable and unpredictable environments. An important characteristic of tropical drylands is the heterogeneity of natural resources. Pastoral mobility implies that pastoralists can move to areas with pasture for their livestock. Moreover, pastoral mobility means that the effect of unforeseen events, e.g. outbreak of disease, bush fire, locust attack, can be mitigated. Finally, migration between different agro-ecological zones means that more animals can be kept than in each of the zones (Niamir-Fuller 1998, Scoones 1995b). In the book on pastoral mobility (Niamir-Fuller and Turner 1999), the so-called 'mobility paradigm' is developed. When analysed in the light of disequilibrium ecology, management practices, institutions, etc. that were once characterised as destructive, are now seen as ecologically rational. Hence, the 'mobility paradigm' provides a framework for understanding pastoral mobility based on the findings of the new rangeland paradigm and examines the various aspects of mobility. The main arguments of the 'mobility paradigm' will be discussed here. …