Analysis of Climate Resilience Among the Livestock Dependent Community at Satao Elerai Community Wildlife Conservancy, Kajiado County, Kenya.
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Date
2019Author
Parashina, John, L
Type
ThesisLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Currently, climate change is a phenomenon of titanic concern for livestock dependent
communities. In particular, climate variability is associated with increased droughts occurrence
and intensity in arid and semi-arid areas resulting in rangelands degradation and livelihood loss
for pastoral people. This has an impact on productivity of livestock farming and sustainability
of pastoral livelihoods. As such, an assessment of climate resilience of livestock dependent
communities at the household and landscape level is necessary in order to find out a way to
improve adaptive capacities among livestock farming communities. This study focused on
Satao Elerai Conservancy (Kajiado County, Kenya) as a case on how community wildlife
conservancies can be used as structural interventions to building climate resilience for
livestock-dependent communities in dryland areas. Objectives of the study included: (i) to
characterise socio-economic and land use arrangements in Satao Elerai Community Wildlife
Conservancy, (ii) an evaluation of management actions geared towards building climate
resilience of livestock production systems in the conservancy and (iii) an analysis of prevailing
policies on climate resilience among livestock-dependent communities. This was an inductive
research where both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were used. To
characterise socio-economic and land use arrangements, semi-structured questionnaires were
administered to all 120 household heads registered as members of the conservancy. To evaluate
the management actions a focus group discussion of 22 members of the management committee
coupled with 10 key informant interviews was conducted. The study also analysed various
policy and legal instruments focusing on their provisions on climate change, livestock
production and wildlife conservation. The data was analysed using Statistical package for
Social Sciences (SPSS) and presented in averages, percentages and rankings to generate the
information. The study found out that the community of Satao Elerai held a strong concern of
their inability to survive in small parcels of land in the face of continuing threats of climate
change and variability. This made them amalgamate their land parcels and identified three (3)
land use types namely: livestock rearing and settlements, wildlife conservation and crop
farming allocated on the basis of suitability and viability within the conservancy. The study
also found out that the zonation was further backed up with a five-year management plan that
stipulates how the various operations of the conservancy were to be carried out anchoring them
to the provisions of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act, 2013. Eighty-eight (88%)
percent of the respondents indicated that the conservancy has been achieving its main purpose
of integrating livestock rearing and wildlife conservation thus demonstrating their strong
support for the land use arrangements in the conservancy. The study concludes that
amalgamation of land parcels into group conservancy cannot be assumed to be the panacea to
climate variability, however, it enables pastoralists create the necessary adaptive capacity for
building their resilience through collective land use planning and livelihood diversification.
This study recommends for the implementation of planned adaptation strategies that will
enhance the resilience of livestock dependent communities to the impacts of climate change.
There is need to harmonize the policy environment at national and county level to support and
facilitate the implementation of the identified strategies that are tailored on specific locations
and targeting particular livestock production system in use
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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