Policy and Practice in Kenya Rangelands: Impacts on Livelihoods and Wildlife

Abstract

Kenya’s new Draft Wildlife Bill singles out Mara, Amboseli and Kitengela as critically endangered ecosystems (MTW, 2007) . The Narok and Kajiado districts which contain these ecosystems are at once the site of extraordinarily rapid economic development and land use change in their urban, peri-urban and higher agro-ecological potential zones, and also characterized by persistent poverty that is both wide and deep (Thornton et al., 2006) . In this book, the Mara, Amboseli and Kitengela case studies have illustrated the changing patchwork of pastoralist development and wildlife conservation throughout Kenya Maasailand. The present chapter draws on that material, together with the wider literature, to tease out the ways in which national policies have shaped the present circumstances of both Maasai livelihoods and rangeland wildlife, and their implications for ongoing change. It builds on this analysis to consider current and future policy options. As far as pastoral development is concerned, livelihoods data from studies in this volume show rural communities remain strongly dependent on extensive livestock production as a central strand of household economies, despite perennial state efforts to transform or replace this system. Alongside livestock production, diversification is certainly widespread. Areas with higher agro-ecological potential are rapidly being converted to cultivation, and there is a growing reliance on non-farm activities. This diversification is as often an expression of poverty and insecurity as of positive choices and investment. With a few notable exceptions (well-placed households adjacent to high-earning, top-end protected areas, and relative to the other sites, the Mara), the proportion of households benefiting directly from wildlife tourism revenues is low, as is the level of benefits such households on average receive.