Preface: Securing the Land and Resource Rights of Pastoral Peoples in East Africa

Abstract

The land question in many African countries has geographical, political, economic, social and demographic nuances. These factors colour land and resource rights for pastoral and forest-dwelling communities. Land tenure--the nature and manner in which rights to and interests in various categories of land are created or determined, allocated and enjoyed--is pivotal to land as property, especially for resource-dependent communities for whom land and livestock comprise their only property and source of livelihood. The introduction of a modern tenure system through colonialism, continued by post-independence government policy and legislation, has made the rights of pastoralists and forest dwelling communities insecure. Pastoralism, a livestock-based land use that has flourished in arid and semi-arid lands, requires a supportive tenure system for both land and related resources. Tenure reform for the most part has come with subtle delegitimation of pastoralism, especially nomadic pastoralism, as boundaries and fixity are the norm. Pastoralism depends on flexible and negotiated cross-boundary access to land and resources, which has not been provided for in many land-reform processes. The boundaries demarcating different parcels of land have over time cut off pastoralists' access to vital water resources and pasture in individually and publicly owned land. It is therefore not surprising that the rights of pastoralists are a recurrent theme in policy discourses in East Africa. The rights of pastoralist communities to land have become very tenuous over time as land-holding and land-use patterns have changed. National law and policy have emphasized agrarian reform, even in areas more suited to pastoralism, with pastoral communities encouraged to settle and change their way of life. However, despite the efforts of governments to alter the lives of pastoralists and make them settle in one place, pastoralism as a land use has persisted. The failure of policy and law to recognize and provide for pastoralists' strategies of production has made the people living in arid and semi-arid lands of eastern Africa very vulnerable. Pertinent issues for these people include tenure security, political marginalization, citizenship for some groups whose existence is not recognized in national discourses, livelihood security, conflict and degradation of ecosystems. The relegation of pastoralism to a back seat has also impacted negatively on their governance systems regarding the allocation and use of land and related resources (Lenaola 1998: 253). These systems have been systematically replaced by state legal and social-ordering structures. Where these structures lack the force of the norms they seek to replace, the result is resource degradation and increased vulnerability for pastoralists. Indeed, the transfer of authority over common resources from the realm of communal rules to the individual or the state may lead to over-exploitation due to the sweeping aside of more widely accepted traditional structures that regulate use. Another factor that has affected pastoralists is climate change, which has resulted in reduced pasture and water. Pastoralists' ecosystems are threatened by desertification resulting from global climate change and conversion to agricultural land-uses. Within a context where national policies have put great emphasis on agriculture and neglected pastoralism, the contribution of grasslands and pastoral ecosystems to economies as habitats for wildlife and biodiversity is relegated to the back seat (AU and UNECA 2009). The pastoral communities' mistrust of government, rooted in both neglect and unpleasant encounters, has contributed to these communities' continuing with outmoded stock-management and environmental practices when governments have enacted laws and policies regarding sustainable natural resources at the national level. Not surprisingly, the quest for tenure security for pastoral communities has become a running theme in processes of national land-policy formulation in the region. …