Table Of ContentStaying Maasai?
Studies In Human Ecology And Adaptation
Series Editors: Daniel G. Bates
Hunter College – City University of New York, New York,
New York
Ludomir Lozny
Hunter College – City University of New York, New York,
New York
AFRICAN LANDSCAPES:
Interdisciplinary Approaches
Edited by Michael Bollig and Olaf Bubenzer
AS PASTORALISTS SETTLE:
Social, Health, and Economic Consequences of the Pastoral Sedentarization in Marsabit
District, Kenya
Elliot Fratkin and Eric Abella Roth
RISK MANAGEMENT IN A HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENT:
A Comparative Study of Two Pastoral Societies
Michael Bollig
SEEKING A RICHER HARVEST:
The Archaeology of Subsistence Intensification, Innovation and Change
Edited by Tina L. Thurston and Christopher T. Fisher
STAYING MAASAI?
Livelihoods, Conservation and Development in East African Rangelands
Edited by Katherine Homewood, Patti Kristjanson and Pippa Chenevix Trench
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series home page at www.springer.com/series/6877
Katherine Homewood · Patti Kristjanson
Pippa Chenevix Trench
Editors
Staying Maasai?
Livelihoods, Conservation
and Development in East African
Rangelands
Editors
Katherine Homewood Patti Kristjanson
Department of Anthropology International Livestock Research Institute
University College London (ILRI)
London, UK Nairobi, Kenya
Pippa Chenevix Trench
Department of Anthropology
University College London
London, UK
ISBN: 978-0-387-87491-3 e-ISBN: 978-0-387-87492-0
DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-87492-0
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Foreword
The Future of Maasailand: Its People and Wildlife
The area of Maasailand straddling the Kenya–Tanzania border supports the
most abundant wildlife populations on earth. It also encompasses 14 of the
world’s most renowned national parks, including Serengeti, Mara, Ngorongoro,
Amboseli, Tarangire, Manyara and Tsavo. Over a million visitors flock to the area
each year, generating over $1.5 billion in revenues. Often overlooked is the even
greater abundance of livestock and the pastoral peoples who depend on them.
Despite thousands of years of pastoralism in eastern Africa, pastoralists are
often blamed for the destruction of the savannas. The blame stems in part from a
long-held view that pastoralism is inefficient and destructive. Research over the
last three decades has dispelled that view and shown that traditional pastoralism
is as productive as well-managed commercial ranches.
The dichotomy scientists and conservationists drew between the natural and
human realm also hampered research on pastoralism for decades. Researchers
plumbed the ecology and behaviour of virtually every wildlife species in the
savannas, yet black-boxed pastoralists and livestock as aberrant and unworthy of
study. The focus on wildlife and parks masked the dominant role pastoralists play
in savanna ecosystems.
Researchers are finally peering into the black box and studying people, as we
shall see in Homewood et al.’s important book on Maasai livelihoods. A look
at government policy in the pastoral lands shows just how timely this study of
livelihoods is.
Policy among East African governments is still rooted in the view that pas-
toralism is an inefficient and destructive use of land. Policy does differ between
Tanzania and Kenya in terms of state versus individual ownership, but both
adhere to the same prescription of curbing migration, settling families and com-
mercializing herd management and production. Land ownership and settlement
are seen as prerequisites for improving infrastructure, investment, market access
and social services.
This prescription works well in arable areas such as the Machakos district
in Kenya, where erosion has fallen sharply since the 1940s, despite a fivefold
increase in human population and large jump in crop production. Contrast this
with the adjacent Kajiado district where livestock numbers have barely risen
since the 1960s, land degradation has increased and poverty has climbed.
v
vi Foreword
The difference reflects differential productivity and malleability of arable and
pastoral lands. Whereas the yields of cereal crops in arable lands can be boosted
manyfold using modern agroindustrial practices, protein production on pastoral
lands already matches the best commercial ranches.
Policy is far better when it comes to wildlife conservation in pastoral lands
– at least in Kenya. On the basis of detailed studies in Amboseli, Kenya’s 1977
wildlife policy recognized the limitations of parks and the need to conserve
entire ecosystems by making wildlife profitable to landowners. From their small
beginnings in Kenya Maasailand, community-based conservation policies have
spread across Africa and beyond. The underlying assumption of the approach is
that wildlife will generate sufficient income to justify its presence on private and
communal lands. But does it?
In “Staying Maasai?”, Homewood et al. look at how Maasai are adapting to
change in the Kenya–Tanzania borderlands, and whether wildlife incomes feature
significantly in their livelihoods. The results show the diversity of responses to
economic transition among the Maasai, ranging from continued pastoralism to
crop farming and employment. The range of responses bucks the view of Maasai
as unchanging traditionalists and shows them investing livestock wealth into new
opportunities. There are, however, huge disparities in wealth and opportunity.
Best off are cattle-rich families whose herds help educate their children and
broaden their prospects. Worst off are the cattle-poor families who diversify out
of necessity and lose herds in the process.
Off-farm income is sure to grow in Maasailand as the options on the land
narrow. Just as ranching families in the American West found it impossible to
survive on small allotments when the open range was subdivided, so the Maasai
will face a similar conundrum. According to surveys we conducted recently at the
African Conservation Centre, Maasai families already see education and off-farm
jobs as the best option for coping with population growth and future droughts.
Other observations in this book echo problems of settling the open range.
Richer and influential families are already securing the best land in Kenya and
buying out poorer families. Fewer families will control large holdings in the
course of privatizing the pastoral lands. This may well improve the outlook of
the health of land and wildlife, as has happened on Laikipia in Kenya. But one
hopes that land consolidation does not reach the point of scuttling the small family
rancher as cattle barons did in the American West.
This book takes a hard look at the importance of wildlife incomes at a house-
hold level around parks. Contrary to assumptions in Kenya that gross tourism
income will trickle down to households, few families are benefiting significantly,
except perhaps in Maasai Mara. Even in Amboseli where community-based
conservation originated, benefits in the form of bursaries and health care are too
diffuse to offset household income losses to wildlife. Unfortunately, some studies
in this book fail to capture all sources of wildlife revenues to communities and
the extent to which income is skimmed off by corruption. Notwithstanding these
shortcomings, household incomes in Amboseli clearly fall far short of projected
gross flows and far short of what it will take to offset wildlife losses.
Foreword vii
The situation is worse in Tanzania where communities have little control over
commercial concessions. Tanzania’s policy takes no account of the costs and
benefits of wildlife, and marginalizes the very constituency on which the future
of wildlife most depends.
The individual household surveys are by far the most important contribution
of this book. Finally, we have some rigorous science showing us what the Maasai
are doing and why, rather than repeating the presumptions and misassumptions
that have shaped land use and conservation policies and practices.
The elemental message of this book is that we must look at Maasailand and
its future prospects from the viewpoint of Maasai families. Population growth,
land loss and social transition among the Maasai are overwhelming the capacity
of their herds to support their families. Environmental vulnerability has risen
sharply. Marginalization and poverty are severely constraining Maasai choices.
The larger, longer-term concerns of wildlife and habitat conservation take back-
seat for families scrambling to survive. So, what can be done to improve liveli-
hoods, health and education?
This book rightly makes a case for a better policy framework. Its message
comes at a time when the Kenyan government’s Office of the President has
accepted that the many policy initiatives dating back to colonial times have failed
because of misplaced assumptions. A new policy is needed, based on an under-
standing of pastoralism and semi-arid environments. Such open-mindedness is
new and refreshing. But even with such good intentions, new policies take time.
And beyond policy formulation lies the challenge of institutional restructuring,
culture change and retraining of personnel.
Given the political and economic marginalization of pastoral communities,
the ground zero for new policies in the semi-arid environments is an assessment
of land ownership and user rights of natural resources. Even Kenya’s solution
of granting individual land titles to customary owners militates against pastoral
communities in a free market economy where wealthier ethnic groups can secure
loans to buy land from the poorer ones. The resulting immigration of richer farming
communities into poorer pastoral ones and displacement of pastoralists has
created ethnic clashes in Kenya.
This book concludes that the lack of wildlife user rights for pastoral commu-
nities in Tanzania will hasten its demise. More rights and greater flexibility will
bring bigger returns to Maasai communities and encourage wildlife use, as in
Mara. But is a laissez faire policy the answer, given the size of the tourism indus-
try in Kenya Maasailand already and its weak reflection in household incomes?
Clearly, there is more to policy than a national strategy and enabling legisla-
tion. Above all, there is the political structure that favours agricultural communi-
ties over pastoral and elite cabals over the poor and serves to dilute and subvert
policy. There is also the drawback of the diffuse governance structure of pastoral
societies. These work slowly and surely in traditional disputes, but hamper the
Maasai when it comes to establishing landowner associations, producer coopera-
tives and the political advocacy needed to counter their marginalized position.
Add the self-interest of leaders among many pastoral communities in keeping
viii Foreword
communities weak for their own gains, and the difficulty of translating policy
into practice is apparent.
Without greater individual liberty and strong local institutions, national policy,
however good, is not enough. The devolution of decisions and the strengthening
of grassroot institutions will do more to elicit development than policy ever can,
and will be far harder to reverse or subvert.
This is borne out by evidence that the most innovative wildlife conservation
programs are emerging in the pastoral areas of Kenya far removed from parks,
rather than those adjacent to them. In the absence of a park, wildlife conserva-
tion is a matter of choice, not obligation, and it must pay its way. Where they
have more latitude to do so, communities are inviting in tourists and tourism
businesses, setting up their own wildlife sanctuaries and employing their own
scouts to protect them. And, unlike a national park, these new community wild-
life sanctuaries do not exclude livestock use. Many, like those of Shompole and
Olkiramatian in the Lake Magadi region of Kenya Maasailand, serve as grass
banks for livestock during dry seasons and droughts.
To succeed, policy must create the conditions for self-starting, self-developing
and self-sustaining communities. “Staying Maasai?” shows that the Maasai are
adapting and diversifying as far and as fast as the economic, ecological and political
environment will allow. Such research has a major role to play in bringing knowledge
of what is happening among the Maasai to the attention of governments, donors,
NGOs and conservationists, just as it has in bringing outside knowledge to the
attention of the Maasai.
Nairobi David Western
3 May 2008
Acknowledgements
This book is largely a product of a collaborative research program, “Assessing
Trade-Offs Between Poverty Alleviation and Wildlife Conservation”, co-ordinated
by the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. We are deeply
grateful to Robin Reid, who had the vision and courage to push ahead with a
project based on important principles that began with hiring Maasai community
members as critical research team members, and the energy and commitment
to inspire, learn with and lead the team throughout and beyond the life of the
project. Our thanks go to the Maasai people who joined in the various surveys
as well as district and local government officials from all of the various study
sites in Kenya and Tanzania. Many people were involved in field research and
we acknowledge the contributions of Leonard Ole Onetu, Moses Ole Neselle,
Everlyn Partoip, Joyce Meshuko Ndakaru and Sylvia Sumare who were part of
the team undertaking the family portraits together with Dickson ole Kaelo, David
Nkedianye, Steven Kiruswa and Kath Cochrane. We are also grateful to the many
other field assistants involved in the individual studies. Others who contributed
in the intellectual and scientific evolution of this project were Beth Bishop, Julian
Derry, Shem Kifugo, Eric Lambin and Joseph Ogutu. We extend our thanks to
John McDermott, Director of research, ILRI, and the many other staff at ILRI
who were involved in a myriad of different ways and are too numerous to men-
tion. We are grateful to the Governments of the United Republic of Tanzania
and the Republic of Kenya for granting permission to undertake this research.
Finally, we thank DGIC of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and
International Co-operation, Belgium who provided the main funding for this
project. Additional funding for the family portraits was from the Department for
International Development, UK.
ix
Contents
1 Changing Land Use, Livelihoods and Wildlife
Conservation in Maasailand ............................................................. 1
Katherine Homewood, Patti Kristjanson, and Pippa Chenevix Trench
1.1 Introduction ................................................................................. 1
1.2 The setting ................................................................................... 3
1.3 A conceptual framework ............................................................. 15
1.4 Structure and Sequence of this Volume ...................................... 32
2 Methods in the Analysis of Maasai Livelihoods .............................. 43
Suzanne Serneels, Mario Herrero, Shauna BurnSilver, Pippa
Chenevix Trench, Kath Cochrane, Katherine Homewood,
Patti Kristjanson, Fred Nelson, Maren Radeny,
D. Michael Thompson, and Mohammed Yahya Said
2.1 Introduction ................................................................................. 43
2.2 Design and Implementation of Field Surveys ............................ 44
2.3 Characterizing Livelihood Strategies .......................................... 56
2.4 Household Choice of Livelihood Strategy ................................. 60
2.5 Factors Influencing Income and Wealth Levels ......................... 61
2.6 Discussion ................................................................................... 62
Family Portraits – Mara...................................................................... ...... 69
3 Maasai Mara – Land Privatization and Wildlife Decline:
Can Conservation Pay Its Way? ....................................................... 77
D. Michael Thompson, Suzanne Serneels, Dickson Ole Kaelo,
and Pippa Chenevix Trench
3.1 Introduction ................................................................................. 77
3.2 The study ..................................................................................... 82
3.3 Livelihood Strategies in the Mara in 2004 ................................. 86
3.4 Trends in Mara Livelihoods, 1998–2004 .................................... 94
3.5 Conservation Dividends, Rents and Politics:
Wildlife Associations and Conservancies ................................... 101
xi
