Landscape management and governance, Il Ngwesi Group Ranch-Laikipia, Kenya

Abstract

The International livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has commissioned a set of case studies as part of efforts to develop deeper understanding of NRM management in Africa’s drylands and contribute to a typology of landscape-level NRM approaches, which would be helpful in clarifying policy and governance design choices for policymakers and development actors. The landscape-level approach is informed by the opinion that much of traditional understandings around community-based natural resource management in drylands contexts, and many of the models for it, is based on observations made on resource management practices at local village-levels. Such are less applicable to dryland environments, where collective pastoral resources are commonly spread out at a scale much larger than the local level. The landscape-level is a more appropriate scale to analyze drylands environments and natural resource management. This document presents the process and findings of an ILRI commissioned NRM case study carried out among the Il’Ngwesi Maasai pastoral community in Laikipia County, Kenya. The study took place between December 2014 and February 2015. The case study, it is hoped, would provide useful lessons to guide choices for NRM policy makers and development actors in the drylands, by contributing to the pool of evidence on what succeeds and what does not in different drylands situations and contexts. The landscape-level methodology will also provide useful insights for NRM dryland stakeholders as they reflect upon general issues of governance, management methods, and relationships to institutions and management structures in other sectors and at other stratums.