Factors influencing natural resource management in pastoral systems: case of Tana River County, Kenya.

Abstract

Tana River County as a semiarid area suffers from water scarcity, amongst other threats to their livelihoods. Communities living in this county practise pastoralism, farming, hunting and fishing to support their livelihoods: They constantly rely on ecosystem services for their activities including water, land and forest resources. In this publication, an assessment of ecosystem services that are most valued within the county, options for natural resource and ecosystem management being implemented, stakeholder preferences and perceptions of the management options were discussed. This report also presents findings from the study and further considers management options that were not being considered by the stakeholders, factors that are likely to influence the implementation of the suggested management options and finally, gendered perception of these issues. From the findings it was evident that among the main categories of ecosystem services, provisioning services are the best understood and most valued by people in Tana River County. As such, there is a common interest among the community members in ensuring best practices are used when utilizing natural resources. It was also noted that stakeholders had differing opinions over which management options were more important than others. For instance, some interventions and approaches for ecosystem services protection and/or improvement were more preferred by women than by men. In other instances, some management options were better preferred by community members than by the county officials. The recommendations and finding from this report will therfore be feed into local and watershed-level decisions aimed at minimizing the impact of various practices on the environment and enhancing the value of ecosystem services from rangelands to improve livelihoods and restore degraded lands.

Key words

• afforestation
• communities
• domestic animals
• drought
• ecosystem management
• ecosystems
• erosion control
• flooding
• forests
• grassland improvement
• grassland management
• grasslands
• land degradation
• livelihoods
• livestock
• livestock farming
• men
• opinions
• pastoralism
• pastures
• rangelands
• resource management
• rotational grazing
• semiarid zones
• watershed management
• watersheds
• wild animals
• wildlife conservation
• wildlife management
• women
• stakeholders