It is well documented that humans influence their environment, and that conservation initiatives can have substantial impacts on local people. Less well understood how conservation initiatives affect social changes, and how these social changes in turn impact conservation goals. Doctoral student Brian Miller, under the supervision of Professor Paul Leslie in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill will conduct a study that explores the social dynamics that mediate conservation actions and outcomes by examining the individual and institutional responses to changes in access to resources. Rivers, swamps, and highlands are key resource areas for livestock herders (pastoralists) living in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, but pastoralist access to these dry-season/drought resources is inhibited by the establishment of parks and other protected areas. Such changes in resource availability have considerable implications for pastoralists' livelihoods, which are increasingly being supplemented with, or replaced by, cultivation and wage labor in sub-Saharan Africa. Although livelihood change among pastoralists is well documented, there has been little study of its interactions with access to drought resources. This study will describe the accessibility of drought resources in the Kenya/Tanzania border region, the relationship between resource access and Maasai livelihood decisions, and the response of local resource management institutions to ongoing livelihood changes. Describing the human responses to changes in resource accessibility will illustrate the social consequences of conservation as well as the indirect ecological implications of these effects. This study will use a mixed methods approach that will entail geospatial analysis of resource distributions, household survey data analysis, and interviews with members of communities that are varying distances from a national park.
Conservation efforts directly affect pastoralists' access to the resources they need to make a living. At the same time, ongoing pastoralist livelihood changes could substantially alter rangeland ecosystems, which cover a large portion of the earth's land surface. These changes have the potential to transform landscapes in the vicinity of iconic conservation areas (e.g., Serengeti National Park), block wildlife migration corridors, and thereby affect the viability of tourism economies. This study explores the idea that the challenges facing conservationists and pastoralists are mutually dependent, and so are the solutions for resolving them. Understanding the consequences of conservation initiatives for local land use is necessary for developing management strategies that sustain ecosystem function and resource availability beyond the boundaries of protected areas. Moreover, pastoralists in some regions are gaining recognition as valuable conservation partners, and identifying patterns of resource availability is needed in order to establish access rights that prevent further land dispossession and marginalization. Finally, learning about the individual strategies and the collective resource management institutions that have allowed some people to remain in the pastoral sector will likely be instructive for livestock herders and conservationists alike.
Livestock-based livelihoods allow herders in arid and semi-arid landscapes to cope with climatic uncertainty, which often takes the form of spatial and temporal variation in rainfall. Pastoralists typically cope with rainfall shortages by moving their livestock to areas that maintain water and grazing such as rivers, swamps, and forests. However, pastoralist access to these drought resource areas can be inhibited by conservation and cultivation. Loss of access to drought resource areas may be influencing the livelihood decisions of Maasai pastoralists living adjacent to world-renowned protected areas in East Africa (e.g., Serengeti National Park), which are coping with considerable human-driven environmental changes; specifically, maintaining wildlife populations and tourism industries in the face of human activities that threaten to block wildlife migrations and damage waterways. These conflicts between conservation and local land-users may be interdependent, wherein conservation is affecting social changes that turn impact the ecosystems targeted by conservation efforts. Understanding these linkages is essential for fostering social and ecological resilience to uncertain climatic changes, which could affect the availability of natural resources both inside and beyond conservation areas. We are using a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the relative influences of conservation and cultivation on drought resource access, identify the factors that have affected Maasai resource-use decisions during recent and historical droughts, and assess how these livelihood and land-use decisions affect rivers and streams. In 2011 co-PI Miller conducted 8 months of dissertation fieldwork in Tanzania. During that time he conducted group and individual interviews, collected nearly 200 household surveys, measured cross-sections and sediment samples for 4 rivers, and collected GPS locations of water sources and land use types in 6 villages that vary in proximity to Tarangire National Park. Data analysis is ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that relative influence of conservation and cultivation on access to drought resources varies by spatial scale. Cultivation is exerting a substantial influence on drought resource availability at the regional scale, and conserved lands contain a disproportionate area of drought resources at the regional and watershed scales. At the local scale, drought resources areas are more proportionately distributed across conserved, cultivated, and available lands, but the configuration of cultivated land is affecting resource access in some communities. Tarangire National Park encompasses a prominent swamp and river; however, according to interviews and surveys regarding droughts that occurred before the park was established in 1970, respondents did not use these sites as extensively as previously thought because of concerns about livestock disease and conflict, and because resources were available in other locations. Preliminary decision-modeling indicates that the selection of livestock watering sites consists of two choices that are influenced by different factors: 1) the choice of water source type (i.e., free versus pay sources) is primarily influenced by proximity and social capital; 2) the choice between local and distant sources is affected by grazing availability and perceived herd size. Small rivers and ephemeral streams continue to serve as critical drought resource areas for many households, but broader land use changes appear to be affecting waterways through alterations in sediment and water supply. Changes in the availability of drought resource areas has far-reaching implications for the viability of herding livelihoods, and consequently for the use of natural resources within conservation landscapes.
