ILRI pastoral research team wins Sustainable Science Award

ILRI/PLE scientist, Mohammed Said

A project of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) called ‘Reto-o-Reto’has won an award five years after it ended. ‘Reto-o-Reto’, in the language of the pastoral Maasai people of East Africa means ‘I help you, you help me’. The project was bestowed the 2012 Sustainability Science Award for a paper titled ‘Evolution of models to support community and policy action with science: Balancing pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation in savannas of East Africa’, published in 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a prestigious American science journal.

The Ecological Society of America gives a Sustainability Science Award each year to the authors of a peer-reviewed paper published in the preceding five years that makes the greatest contribution to the emerging science of ecosystem and regional sustainability through the integration of ecological and social sciences.

Authored by 17 researchers representing 9 institutions, the paper shared experimental work in boundary-spanning research to help balance action in poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation in four pastoral ecosystems in East Africa. These were the Tarangire-Simanjiro-Manyara pastoral ecosystem in northern Tanzania; the Amboseli-Longido pastoral ecosystem on the northern and western slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, which straddles Kenya and Tanzania; the Kitengela pastoral ecosystem just south of the Nairobi National Park; and the Mara Pastoral ecosystem in Kenya, which is one of the wettest pastoral areas in East Africa.

Some of the team members studied the evolution of these pastoral systems in East Africa over a 25-year period, learning along the way how to close gaps, integrate scientific knowledge and then move outside their disciplines to policymakers and communities.

Writing to the paper’s lead author, ecologist Robin Reid, who worked for ILRI during the time of the research, Eleanor Sterling, chair of the subcommittee for the awards, said that the committee members ‘were impressed with this highly collaborative paper and how it focuses not just on research but on the research process itself, providing valuable and detailed insights into how the process of ecological research can align itself better with end-goals including conservation and poverty alleviation.

‘We felt the creation of hybrid local-scientific knowledge and the partnership of technical experts with place-based knowledge holders who understand the particular contexts in which stewardship occurs are critical to sustainability goals and to emerging needs such as actionable climate change adaptation strategies. The multi-partner, multidisciplinary approach is laudable, not only because you all illustrate how important it is to tackle sustainability problems from multiple angles, but also because you show that these collaborations are possible and serve to inspire us all.’

One of the authors, ILRI scientist Mohamed Said, says: ‘it took a lot of effort to pull the team together but it is satisfying that each member continued to play a crucial role in ensuring the outcomes were realized long after the project came to an end. These include the development of conservancies in the Mara, passing of the Land use Master plan in Kitengela, contribution to review of a number of polices related to drylands and pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania and the development of a new MSc and PhD program at the University of Nairobi to focus on the drylands. This award will further boost these efforts’.

This is the second award that this team has won for their work on cross-boundary research. The first was in 2006, when it won the CGIAR ‘Best Innovative Partnership’ award. In bestowing this award, ILRI’s mother organization, the CGIAR recognized ILRI’s collaboration with the Kitengela Ilparakuo Landowners Association (KILA). The collaboration won a Judges’ Award with a cash prize of US$30,000, to use for further collaborative work. ILRI’s drylands team has been collaborating with the Maasai of Kitengela Plains, located next to Nairobi National Park, in Kenya, since 2002. They have devised means to ensure that people, livestock and wildlife can live in harmony and have lobbied government to reduce fencing to allow the annual migration of wildlife though the Kitengela Plains, thus helping to prevent conflicts between wildlife and people and their livestock. Other collaborators of the program are Kenya Wildlife Service, Friends of Nairobi National Park, The Wildlife Foundation and Kajiado County Council.

 

LAPSSET needs better realignment to Vision 2030

Discussion has begun on how best to improve the economic, social and environmental outcomes of the recently launched Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor to make it a success and support the delivery of Vision 2030.

A meeting of interested stakeholders convened to discuss the LAPSSET corridor: preliminary analysis of risks and opportunities noted that “ …ninety percent of the LAPSSET corridor goes through arid and semi-arid lands, which are important areas for livestock production, tourism, biodiversity conservation, and cultural heritage. However, the feasibility study doesn’t give the full impact of the LAPSSET corridor on livestock and wildlife mobility or on water and pasture competition despite the fact that these issues already trigger deadly clashes between various communities….”

Due to a focus on a single component of Vision 2030, the LAPSSET corridor is currently undermining other objectives of Vision 2030. For example, it lays emphasize in promoting tourism in Kenya therefore it requires the improvement of tourism infrastructure and demands the securing of migratory corridors., The LAPSSET corridor traverses wildlife corridors which Vision 2030 is striving to achieve. It should attempt to balance the infrastructural objectives and tourism growth while minimizing impact on biodiversity. Such a multi-faceted approach to increasing Kenya’s economic growth ideally starts with an informed debate on the economic, social and environmental risks and opportunities related to the LAPSSET.

The LAPSSET corridor is one of the flagship projects of Kenya’s Vision 2030 whose objectives are “to improve access and connectivity between Kenya, Southern Sudan and Ethiopia as well as to stimulate economic activity in the Northern and Eastern parts of Kenya”.

The new Constitution of Kenya provides the legal framework for ensuring informed and participatory decision-making around development infrastructure like the LAPSSET corridor. In addition, Kenya has the data and expertise to inform discussions about the LAPSSET with its regular economic survey conducted by Kenya Bureau of Statistics or the thirty (30) years of information on region gathered by the Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS).

So far, however, the lack of meaningful stakeholder engagement has already resulted in court actions and the feasibility study hasn’t demonstrated an understanding of the context in which the LAPSSET is taking place.

The corridor presents a unique opportunity for the Northern and Eastern parts of Kenya to lay the ground for sustainable development. It will rectify a lack of accessibility to local, regional and international markets and will bring much needed investment in these regions. To be successful in the long-term, however, a project of such magnitude requires relevant information to be made available and debated by the various stakeholders.

The meeting was attended by stakeholder organisations involved in promoting rangeland livelihoods and conservation, among others the Kenya Rangeland Coalition, the International Livestock Research Institute and the East African Wildlife Society. These organisations are looking forward to collaborating with others and the project developers to realize the potential of the LAPSSET corridor.

 

Wildlife ‘crash’ in the Mara region of Kenya, Africa

Populations of wildlife species in the world-renowned Masai Mara reserve in Kenya have crashed in the past three decades, according to research published in the Journal of Zoology.

Numbers of impala, warthog, giraffe, topi and Coke’s hartebeest have declined by over 70%, say scientists.

Even fewer survive beyond the reserve in the wider Mara, where buffalo and wild dogs have all but disappeared, while huge numbers of wildebeest no longer pass through the region on their epic migration.

However, numbers of cattle grazing in the reserve have increased by more than 1100% per cent, although it is illegal for them to so do.

This explosion in the numbers of domestic livestock grazing in the Mara region of south-west Kenya, including within the Masai Mara national reserve, is one of the principal reasons wildlife has disappeared, say the scientists who conducted the research.

Dr Joseph Ogutu, a senior statistician in the Bioinformatics unit of the University of Hohenheim, Germany conducted the study with colleagues there and at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/13573912

 

Landsberg joins PLE

Florence Landsberg joined the PLE team as a visiting scientist in January. She is supporting the team in Nairobi on the Development of Prototype Tools to Support Resource Mapping, Land Use Development and Planning in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands. The project aims to produce learning materials for college and high school students to help them appreciate the use of mapping and data in long term planning and policy making.  This project builds on the successes of Nature’s Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, a project that saw the team produce an atlas that shows the location of natural resources in Kenya. 

Landsberg has been working as a Researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a think-tank based in Washington DC. Over the last 5 years, she has had many opportunities to collaborate with ILRI, mainly on producing Nature’s Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (http://www.wri.org/publication/natures-benefits-in-kenya) and Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda (http://www.wri.org/publication/mapping-a-better-future-livestock). An Agronomy Engineer with a Masters degree in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems ( GIS).

 

Another McGill University student joins PLE

Stephen S. Moiko has joined the People Livestock and Environment Theme, in Nairobi to complete his dissertation. A Ph.D Candidate, Dept. of Anthropology at the McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Stephen is interested in the dynamics of changing property rights and land tenure on the livelihoods of pastoral people in rangeland environments.

He conducted his doctoral research in 2007-8, in Southern Kenya (Olkiramatian Group Ranch) where he examined systems of communal land governance and evolving local institutions for resource management in the area.

“We welcome Stephen to the team and look forward to a time interaction and challenge as we work together around issues in the rangelands”, says Dr Jan de Leeuw, the Team Leader for PLE 2 – Reducing vulnerability of livestock-based livelihoods, ecosystem goods & services in pastoral and agropastoral Systems. The Team already has another Mcgill student Philip Osano who is on his final leg of the PhD.

 

Surviving drought in Kitengela, Kenya

Surviving the Drought from duckrabbit.

The 2009 drought in Kenya has had a devastating effect on pastoralists. Hundreds of thousands of cattle died and with them a way of life that had provided families a livelihood from the land.

We met Lawrence in a quarry just out of of Nairobi. For many generations his family have reared cattle on the rangelands of Kitengala. Now he shifts rocks in order to pay his way through University and the dream of a better life.

This photofilm was made by duckrabbit during a duckrabbit photofilm workshop at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi August 2010.

The audio and photos were collected in less than an hour.

Photos (c) David White

Audio and production Benjamin Chesterton

A duckrabbit training production for ILRI:

 

PLE Student now joins the Drs

Fortunata Msoffe: the study for the PhD is long but with a sweet return”

Fortunata Msoffe has successfully defended her PhD, thus qualifying for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, from the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Msoffe is a Tanzanian Wildlife ecologist and Park warden planner as well as Geographic Information systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing Analyst. Since 2005, when she joined ILRI as a Graduate Fellow and a PhD research student, Msoffe has worked with ILRI’s People Livestock and Environment Program (PLE) and Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences to understand the landscape and local-scale level focusing on the drivers, causes and impacts of land-cover and land-use changes on the wildlife and agropastralists in the Maasai-Steppe of Northern Tanzania. This study culminated in her thesis entitled: Land Use Change in Maasailand: Drivers, Dynamics and Impacts on large-herbivores and agro-pastoralism.

“It was a long, exciting and sometimes boring journey. You get tired; discouraged but then you have to keep on going because in the end it is a rewarding one!”, says the ecologist who is currently the Chief Park Warden of Udzungwa Mountains National Park, East-southern Tanzania (along the eastern-arc).

Last year (2009), Msoffe won two awards that both geared at leveraging the intellectual prowess of researchers. The first was the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship. It is designed to complement and strengthen the ongoing research activities and career development of African women scientists. The second was the student award from The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB). This is an international professional organization dedicated to promoting the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity.

“My advise to anyone is to sometimes give it a break for a while but keep on-going knowing that you should complete no matter what and that end should be the degree!”, she says.