US-Kenya Dissertation Enhancement: Fragmenting the Commons: Property Rights Transitions in Maasai Pastoral Land

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0004415OstromThis dissertation enhancement grant supports a US graduate student, Ms. Esther Mwangi, working under the guidance of Professor Elinor Ostrom, of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University at Bloomington, to conduct a study of the underlying forces in the movement to privatize commonly held land in areas inhabited by Maasai pastoralists in Kenya.The transformation of land property rights from communal rights, which are often based on indigenous systems, to more formal and legally enforced individual rights is occurring throughout much of Subsaharan Africa. Privatization enables modern methods of land management to be applied with the expectations that: 1) land productivity will increase; and 2) environmental degradation that resulted from the communal systems will be controlled or reduced. But assigning rights to a single holder disenfranchises many individuals who formerly had customary rights to the resources in that area. Furthermore, it can result in a highly politicized system for determining land access. Maasailand is a climatically diverse and often harsh environment, and the Maasai had traditionally relied on herd mobility to maximize the variability of the food and water resources for their livestock. But starting with the land privatization movement in Maasailand in the 1960's, many Maasai banded together to form group ranches, and many of these ranches are now being separated into individually owned units. The fragmentation of their range should increase the Maasai's vulnerability to environmental variability, so why are they choosing a land management system that is inconsistent with their survival strategies and cultural traditions? Mwangi will conduct studies to determine: 1) Why property rights in Maasailand are changing from group-owned parcels to individual units; 2) What the environmental consequences of this transition are; and 3) Whether this transition represents an appropriate model for the environmental and socio-cultural conditions of the Maasai. She will analyze how the incentives of particular actors (such as group ranch members, individual ranch owners, and policy makers) are oriented towards a particular property rights system, and the institutional mechanisms they use to make their preferences a reality. To accomplish this, she will conduct interviews with a variety of individuals, and carry out archival research at the Kenya National Archives and Kajidao District Archives. The environmental health of a land area may be another important consideration in the transformation of property rights. Mwangi also hypothesizes that the greatest amount of range degradation will occur in the individual units due to their higher concentrations of livestock. To test this hypothesis, she will conduct vegetation analyses and collect data on rainfall patterns in order to develop an environmental assessment of range conditions and health between group-held and individually-owned parcels of land. Project results should help establish a theory of property rights transitions for Maasailand which takes into account the mix of political, socio-economic, and environmental conditions under which transition occurs. Dr. Patricia Kameri-Mbote and others at the African Center for Technology Studies will provide guidance to Ms. Mwangi on this project.The results should advance the theory of common property rights, contribute valuable information about land management policy, and also increase the current knowledge about the political economy of pastoral Africa. This grant will also support an international research experience very early in the career of an outstanding graduate student. This project is being jointly funded by the Division of International Programs and the Division of Social and Economic Sciences.