Land Use on Privatized Pastoral Land in Kenya: The Impact of Household Strategies on Livelihoods and the Environment

肯尼亚私有化牧区的土地利用：家庭策略对生计和环境的影响

• 批准号: 0822752
• 负责人: Carolyn Lesorogol
• 金额: $ 22.66万
• 依托单位: Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0822752&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Land; Use; Privatized; Pastoral; Kenya

Dr. Carolyn Lesorogol (Washington University St. Louis) along with Dr. Randall B. Boone and Dr. Michael B. Coughenour (Colorado State University) will undertake research on the relationship between individual and communal decision-making and the changing dynamics of land management in fragile ecosystems. The research will be carried out among Samburu pastoralists in Kenya.African livestock herders depend on natural resources for their survival in difficult, semi-arid environments. Management of land historically was shared among community members but in the 1980s, some communities privatized their land, transferring decision-making from councils of elders to individual land owners. In the community studied here, new rules recently have emerged that restore a degree of communal control over individual land use decisions. Such a reassertion of community authority following privatization is unusual and provides an opportunity to investigate processes of institutional change and their impact on household decisions regarding land use as well as their broader environmental impact. Three questions will be addressed in the study: (1) How and why have new rules regarding individual land use decisions emerged at this time in the community? (2)To what extent and in which ways do the new rules influence household decision-making regarding land use? (3) How do household decisions on land use and livestock production aggregate and impact the overall environment and livelihood possibilities for pastoralists in this region? The study combines anthropological field research methods with computer simulation modeling of the natural environment and human decision-making. Ethnographic interviews, observations, and surveys will be used to investigate the processes of institutional innovation leading to the new grazing rules and the impact of the rules on household land use and grazing practices. These data as well as ecological information will be used to build simulation models of the Samburu ecosystem and households. The models simulate the aggregate effects of household decisions on the environment and the feedback from the environment to household welfare. The importance of this research lies in the new insight it will provide into the social process through which institutions emerge and become established, with particular implication for understanding institutions for managing natural resources. The modeling component of the project will contribute to making the results more generalizable beyond this particular research context and perfecting new resarch tools that can be employed by other social scientists. The results have policy implications for governments designing land tenure and management strategies for semi-arid rangelands in Africa and elsewhere.

卡罗琳Lesorogol博士（华盛顿大学圣路易斯）沿着与兰德尔博士B。布恩和迈克尔B博士。Coughenour（科罗拉多州立大学）将研究个人和社区决策与脆弱生态系统中土地管理动态变化之间的关系。这项研究将在肯尼亚的桑布鲁牧民中进行。非洲牧民在困难的半干旱环境中依靠自然资源生存。历史上，土地管理由社区成员共同管理，但在1980年代，一些社区将其土地私有化，将决策权从长老理事会转移到个人土地所有者手中。在这里研究的社区，最近出现了新的规则，恢复了一定程度的社区控制个人土地使用的决定。在私有化之后重新确立社区权力是不寻常的，这提供了一个机会，可以调查体制变化的过程及其对家庭土地使用决定的影响以及更广泛的环境影响。本研究将探讨三个问题：（1）如何以及为什么在这个时候在社区中出现了关于个人土地使用决定的新规则？(2)To新规则在何种程度上和以何种方式影响家庭关于土地使用的决策？(3)家庭关于土地使用和畜牧生产的决定如何综合和影响该地区牧民的总体环境和生计可能性？该研究将人类学实地研究方法与自然环境和人类决策的计算机模拟建模相结合。民族志访谈，观察和调查将被用来调查导致新的放牧规则的制度创新的过程和规则对家庭土地使用和放牧方式的影响。 这些数据以及生态信息将用于建立桑布鲁生态系统和家庭的模拟模型。这些模型模拟了家庭决策对环境的总体影响以及环境对家庭福利的反馈。这项研究的重要性在于，它将提供新的见解，通过制度的出现和建立的社会过程中，特别是理解机构管理自然资源的影响。该项目的建模部分将有助于使结果更普遍超出这一特定的研究背景和完善新的研究工具，可以采用其他社会科学家。研究结果对非洲和其他地区政府制定半干旱牧场的土地保有权和管理战略具有政策意义。