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

Carolyn Lesorogol博士(华盛顿大学圣路易斯分校)将与Randall B.Boone博士和Michael B.Coughenour博士(科罗拉多州立大学)一起研究脆弱生态系统中个人和集体决策与土地管理动态变化之间的关系。这项研究将在肯尼亚桑布鲁牧民中进行。非洲牧民在艰苦的半干旱环境中依靠自然资源生存。土地管理历来由社区成员共享，但在1980年代，一些社区将其土地私有化，将决策从长老理事会转移到个人土地所有者手中。在这里研究的社区中，最近出现了新的规则，恢复了对个人土地使用决定的一定程度的社区控制。这种在私有化后重新确立社区权威的做法是不寻常的，它提供了一个机会来调查体制变革的进程及其对家庭土地使用决策的影响及其对更广泛的环境的影响。这项研究将解决三个问题：(1)关于个人土地使用决策的新规则是如何以及为什么在这个时候出现在社区中的？(2)新规则在多大程度上和以什么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业生产的决定如何汇总并影响该地区牧民的整体环境和生计可能性？这项研究结合了人类学的实地研究方法，以及对自然环境和人类决策的计算机模拟建模。将使用民族志访谈、观察和调查来调查导致新的放牧规则的制度创新过程，以及这些规则对家庭土地使用和放牧做法的影响。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综合影响以及环境对家庭福利的反馈。这项研究的重要性在于，它将为机构产生和建立的社会过程提供新的见解，特别是对理解管理自然资源的机构的影响。该项目的建模部分将有助于使结果在这一特定研究背景之外更具普遍性，并完善可供其他社会科学家使用的新研究工具。研究结果对各国政府为非洲和其他地方的半干旱牧场设计土地保有权和管理战略具有政策意义。

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.