Year of publication 2009

This guide is designed to help communities and policy-makers at local and national levels make informed choices regarding land use, business ventures, and public policy in pastoral areas, particularly the Maasai Steppe and other semi-arid parts of East Africa. This decision support tool, Sustaining communities, livestock and wildlife stems from work by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the United Republic of Tanzania on a Global Environmental Fund (GEF)/World Bank project called "Novel forms of livestock and wildlife integration adjacent to protected areas in Africa - Tanzania." The tool is intended for practitioners working on participatory natural resource use and management. It will be useful for district and village officers, the private sector and government representatives, NGOs and development agencies involved in the processes of land-use planning and natural resource management. Purposes of this decision support tool include: to enable policy-makers and community members to better understand how and why the physical landscape of East Africa is changing, to provide how-to guidance on land-use planning, both at national and local levels, to offer fresh ideas and possibilities for conservation- based businesses that work in livestock/wildlife areas, to help guide communities, and outside facilitators, through the processes of managing conflicts over land use; to offer a repository of lessons learned and methods developed under the project and beyond.