Pastoralism within land administration in Kenya : the missing link

Abstract In land administration (LA), the right to exercising property/ownership rights on land is based on cadastral processes of adjudication, survey and rights registration. Private ownership rights are now being taken up in pastoral areas, where they must contend with pastoralists’ land rights. Pastoral land use requires seasonal migrations determined by climatic conditions. This study aimed to find out how well the existing land laws and property rights in LA are able to serve the requirements of pastoralists land use, identify mismatches and put forward possible solutions. A case study was carried out in the Samburu–Laikipia–Isiolo–Meru landscape in Kenya. Data on the degree of livestock dependency among pastoralist communities, the spatial extent and patterns of dry season migrations, the resulting encounters between herders’ and non-pastoralist land use actors, and the perceptions of land rights held by actors were collected through a variety of methods and analysed. The results show that pastoralism is still active. The migration corridors reveal that herders maintain extensive dry season mobility, even though some of the corridors currently overlap with areas where land is privately owned by non-pastoralist land use actors. Moreover, the results show that most non-pastoralist land use actors have their land rights registered, but seasonal encounters with migrating pastoralists persist as pastoralists continue to exercise customary rights of communal use. We conclude that existing land laws and property rights in LA are suitable for sedentary land use, but do not address how to serve pastoralists land rights in time and space. The pastoralist's migration routes and patterns obtained indicated that it is possible to predict where pastoralists will be at a given time/drought period. This information could be used by decision makers and land administrators to identify where and when pastoralists’ land rights apply. This could provide the foundation for including pastoralists’ spatiotemporal land rights in LA. Arguments emphasize that adjudication, surveys and registration of rights should focus not only on ownership and full control of land, but also on defined periods when spatiotemporal mobility and access rights could be granted to pastoralists.

[1]  E. Fratkin.  Pastoralism: Governance and Development Issues , 1997 .

[2]  H. Dekker.  In Pursuit of Land Tenure Security , 2006 .

[3]  Randall B. Boone,et al.  Modelling the impacts of group ranch subdivision on agro-pastoral households in Kajiado, Kenya , 2006 .

[4]  Claudia Chang,et al.  Pastoralists at the periphery : herders in a capitalist world , 1996 .

[5]  Paul van der Molen,et al.  Institutional aspects of 3D cadastres , 2003, Comput. Environ. Urban Syst..

[6]  R. Meinzen-Dick,et al.  Cutting the web of interests: Pitfalls of formalizing property rights , 2009 .

[7]  Jaap Zevenbergen,et al.  A Systems Approach to Land Registration and Cadastre , 2002 .

[8]  M. Weitzman.  ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS , 2010 .

[9]  Richard T. Conant,et al.  Ecological and social characterization of key resource areas in Kenyan rangelands , 2008 .

[10]  T. McClanahan,et al.  East African Ecosystems and Their Conservation , 1996 .

[11]  K. Homewood,et al.  Conservation in Africa: Pastoralism, conservation and the overgrazing controversy , 1988 .

[12]  E. Fratkin.  East African Pastoralism in Transition: Maasai, Boran, and Rendille Cases , 2001, African Studies Review.

[13]  C. Cassell,et al.  Essential guide to qualitative methods in organizational research , 2004 .

[14]  P. Burger.  Embedded Case Study Methods: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Knowledge , 2001 .

[15]  C. Toulmin,et al.  Land tenure and administration in Africa : lessons of experience and emerging issues , 2004 .

[16]  Klaus Deininger,et al.  Land policies for growth and poverty reduction , 2003 .

[17]  N. T. Hobbs,et al.  Fragmentation of rangelands: Implications for humans, animals, and landscapes , 2008 .

[18]  B. Swallow,et al.  Property rights, risk, and livestock development in Africa: issues and project approach. , 1999 .

[19]  Ian Williamson,et al.  Land administration “best practice” providing the infrastructure for land policy implementation , 2001 .

[20]  N. T. Hobbs,et al.  Fragmentation in semi-arid and arid landscapes: consequences for human and natural systems , 2008 .

[21]  A. Weale.  Embedded Case Study Methods: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Knowledge , 2003 .

[22]  P. van der Molen,et al.  Capacity Assessment in Land Administration , 2008 .

[23]  S. Coldham.  Land-Tenure Reform in Kenya: The Limits of Law , 1979 .

[24]  Christiaan Lemmen,et al.  First experiences with High Resolution Imagery Based Adjudication Approach for Social Tenure Domain Model in Ethiopia , 2009 .

[25]  M. Thompson,et al.  In-Migrants and Exclusion in East African Rangelands: Access, Tenure and Conflict , 2004, Africa.

[26]  B. Swallow,et al.  Fuzzy access: modelling grazing rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. , 1999 .

[27]  E. Mwangi,et al.  Securing access to drylands resources for multiple users in Africa: A review of recent research , 2008 .

[28]  Ian Williamson,et al.  Organising land information for sustainable land administration , 2008 .

[29]  G. Oba,et al.  AN OVERVIEW OF DROUGHT STRATEGIES AND LAND USE IN AFRICAN PASTORAL SYSTEMS , 1999 .

[30]  Corrine Glesne,et al.  Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An Introduction , 1991 .

[31]  Ian Scoones,et al.  Living with uncertainty : new directions in pastoral development in Africa , 1995 .

[32]  N. McCarthy,et al.  Fuzzy access : Modeling grazing rights in sub-Saharan Africa , 2005 .

[33]  D. Bromley,et al.  The economics of Cain and Abel: Agro‐pastoral property rights in the Sahel , 1995 .

[34]  M. J. Kraak,et al.  Cartography: Visualization of Geospatial Data , 1996 .

[35]  P. van der Molen,et al.  The dynamic aspect of land administration: an often-forgotten component in system design , 2002 .

[36]  C. Toulmin.  Securing land and property rights in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of local institutions , 2009 .

[37]  R. Blench,et al.  'You can't go home again' Pastoralism in the new millennium , 2006 .