FOOD SECURITY IN ARID RANGELANDS
SALIENT FEATURES OF ARID ZONE PASTORALISM
GENERAL IMPLICATIONS FOR FOOD SECURITY AND PASTORAL DEVELOPMENT
SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITIES FOR FAO
The World Food Summit has stimulated many organisations to reassess policies and programmes in food security. Some hard decisions are involved, in setting standards for what constitutes "security" and in choosing between helping the maximum number of people and relieving the most acute cases of hardship.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), when launching its Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) in 1994, focused attention particularly on helping low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDCs) to improve food security at the national level. However, with 82 countries currently appearing on the LIFDC list, efforts initially are being directed to a short list of 18 countries and are being focused too on situations which offer scope for improvement through water management and agronomic innovation. Efforts extend into the arid zone, with countries such as Mauritania and Niger included on the short list, but without addressing the more difficult dryland situations.
Yet the special needs of drylands are freely acknowledged, as evidenced by the introductory words of the booklet on dryland development strategies issued by FAO in 1993:
"The drylands of the world have for long been recognised as requiring special attention. They occupy at least 20 million square kilometres of the developing world and support, often in an impoverished state, nearly half a billion pastoralists and small farmers, who attempt to wrest a livelihood from these fragile environments."
The definition of drylands most commonly used by FAO is of lands having less than 120 growing days per year. Although this definition embraces several distinct dryland types (as are summarised in the booklet cited, FAO 1993), arid rangelands are by far the most extensive. Undoubtedly the cropped areas are more densely populated, yet no more than 10% of the drylands of Africa, Asia and Latin America are in fact cropped. Moreover, the pastoralists who utilise arid rangelands face levels of uncertainty and hardship in their subsistence which few others experience.
It follows that sooner or later attention will turn to improving food security in arid rangelands. This paper aims to prepare for that time. While there is a substantial body of development experience on which to draw, it has taken the best part of 30 years for development planners to learn, from many project failures, that arid rangelands and pastoral production systems do not respond as other areas and economies to development intervention. And misconceptions still abound concerning the ecology of arid rangelands and the nature of pastoralism. These aspects are briefly reviewed here, before considering implications for food security programmes.
Diversity. It is commonly assumed that lands too dry for reliable cropping are all rather uniform. Yet arid lands are more extensive than lands of agricultural or forest potential, and extend across a great range of latitudes and elevations. Even when desert is excluded, the area is large and varied.
Although the cultivation of arid rangeland typically destroys natural vegetation, for no lasting benefit, cropping can be productive where run-off can be captured or irrigation practised. And the scope for other forms of resource use also varies with local conditions; particularly with biodiversity and the use that is made of woody vegetation. Neither customary resource use nor intervention to improve food security can afford to focus exclusively on the grazing resource.
Main rangeland types. Distinction needs to be drawn between three categories of arid rangeland. These are:
(i) semi-desert, where vegetation is confined mostly to water courses and depressions, with trees and shrubs contributing more than grass to animal sustenence;
(ii) areas that are more widely vegetated, but with a ground cover comprising annual plant species and no significant contribution from perennial grasses; and
(iii) areas of greater biodiversity, with perennial as well as annual grasses, and often with a wide spectrum of woody species also.
While this gradient reflects increasing rainfall, the correlation is with moisture availability rather than with total annual rainfall. And one factor that determines rainfall effectiveness is evapotranspiration, which lapses as latitude and elevation increase. Consequently, "areas of greater biodiversity" arise more commonly and under lower rainfall in temperate and upland zones than in tropical lowlands.
In the lowland tropics, arid rangelands rarely progress beyond an annual grassland type. Such is the case in the Sahel of West Africa, where potential evapotranspiration is consistently high and rainfall is concentrated into a short season of 3-4 months duration. Yet in those parts of East Africa which experience bimodal rainfall (with two seasons per year and hence shorter dry seasons), a mean annual rainfall of 300-400 mm is sufficient to support perennial grasses and greater biodiversity.
Management implications. Such differences are important. Annual grasses can be highly nutritious while they last, but once dry and brittle, they disintegrate more rapidly than perennials under the influence of trampling, termites and wind. Therefore, unless the animals present can turn to browse, they have difficulty surviving to the end of the dry season. In principle, animals such as camels and goats should fare better than cattle and sheep, since the former browse more freely than the latter. However, much depends on the woody species present; and the best browse species may well occur, with perennial grass, in areas of greater biodiversity.
One further aspect of arid zone ecology warrants stress. Not only is rainfall low and erratic but it is also prone to cyclic variation. Historical records over the present century frequently show alternating periods, in which rainfall is consistently above or below the long term average (in as many as 5 years out of 7, or 14 out of 20, depending on the regional cycle). Moreover, years of exceptional rainfall are quite likely to trigger radical changes in vegetation, such that a succession of distinct vegetation types may occupy a site over the course of a century, each with equal claim to characterise the site.
These phenomena affect areas of biodiversity more than annual grasslands. However, semi-desert can show similar shifts, as water courses change alignment and leave established stands of trees and shrubs to die. It is a feature of semi-deserts that the browse plants on which productivity depends are often fed by water flowing into the area from zones of higher rainfall. Indeed, when wells are reliable and browse healthy, semi-desert can be better suited to year-round occupancy than annual grassland.
Pastoralism as a form of occupancy. Pastoralism is the commonest form of occupancy and resource use in arid rangelands; and the only one (apart from large settlements based around permanent water) to raise major concerns of food security. The strategies of resource use employed by pastoralists pivot around drought management and food security; and well-conceived development schemes focus on the same issues.
Past development efforts have not had much success in supporting pastoralism. One reason for this is that pastoralism is commonly treated as a livestock production system; as a source of livestock for consumers in urban and agricultural areas. But this perspective, of pastoralism as an agricultural sector activity, can only be applied usefully where pastoralism is practised on the fringe, locationally and economically, of areas of higher rainfall. It is too crude a caricature to be helpful in drier and more remote areas.
Pastoralism, it should be remembered, was once a dominant geopolitical system on the world stage. Since then, pastoralism has been subjugated to other political and economic systems; but still it operates as a form of territorial occupancy. And like other forms of occupancy, pastoralism is diversified so far as the resource base allows.
Economic diversification. Because arid rangelands rarely possess or attract the resources needed to diversify in other directions, diversification in pastoralism is manifest mainly in livestock; in the several roles which livestock play, as capital, in aesthetics and social relationships, as a source of subsistence and in trade. The value which an individual animal holds in a pastoral economy is determined by the function that it fulfils, relative to the other animals available, and this may be more or less than its market value.
But diversification is not manifest entirely in livestock. Although resources such as oil and precious metals (and sometimes other resources) are acquired by the State, hunting and gathering and localised cropping are commonly practised within the scope of pastoralism. Individuals and families also diversify into artisanal activities and paid employment, either contributing goods and services directly to the pastoral economy or bringing in cash to help maintain their own household and pastoral identity.
Types of pastoral system. It follows that pastoralism takes many forms, with societies varying in the livestock they keep and in the uses they make of livestock and other resources. Usually the livestock are well adapted to the environment concerned, but this is not always the case. For example, a society which has evolved around cattle often retains cattle even when it occupies territory better suited to camels and goats. And the poorer members of society usually keep species or adopt practices different from those of their wealthier neighbours.
The relationship between environment, livestock species and resource use is seldom one of simple cause and effect. These variables lie in a matrix of interacting factors which, taken altogether, serve to differentiate one pastoral system from another. Other factors in the matrix include mobility, diet and economic orientation. Trade-orientated pastoral systems are often associated with a diet based on the daily consumption of grain, and with patterns of transhumance that include annual stopovers in agricultural areas where animals can be traded for supplies of grain. When milk is the dietary staple, peripatetic movement is more likely than a regular pattern of transhumance, since the primary concern then is to seek out whichever areas are best able to keep animals in milk. Agropastoralists who grow their own grain are different yet again, because of the need to be close to their croplands, with draught animals, at set seasons of the year.
Change in pastoral systems. Furthermore, pastoral systems are subject to change. Not only do existing systems have to adapt to pressures of population and losses of territory but they also respond to changing expectations and opportunities. Thus, motorised camel herding is now practised in some oil-rich countries. Another new category of increasing importance is investment-based herding. This arises when business people or officials invest savings in livestock in their home area. The animals may run with those of the existing system, but their function is different, since they are not used primarily for subsistence or trade but to provide personal satisfaction, capital growth and social security.
The first step, whenever intervention is contemplated in arid rangelands, is to categorise the pastoral system(s) involved. In addition to differentiating them in terms of livestock and economic orientation, and population pressure and mobility, it is necessary to establish how society is organised for purposes of decision-making and controlling access to resources. This is a prerequisite for community participation in development, and helpful too in targetting assistance to the poor through societal mechanisms for welfare support. Some of these aspects are elaborated in the next section, in the context of NRM.
NRM is the principal means by which pastoralists meet domestic needs and pastoral societies secure their future. The essence of pastoral development, likewise, is to ensure sustainable NRM, and to link this with improved social services. Other development objectives may attach, but most World Bank lending in pastoral areas now channels through NRM projects.
Yet the nature of NRM makes it a difficult area in which to intervene. NRM can be readily comprehended as a concept or general objective, but in practice it is the product of three quite distinct entities. The natural system, governed by the laws of nature, determines the resources on offer; the user system determines the utility of those resources; and the larger geopolitical system determines the boundaries and externalities which govern resource utilization. This is not the place to unravel all the complexities of NRM, but some of them emerge in the description that follows of the aspects most affecting food security in arid rangelands. Three key features of NRM are covered, with an additional comment on more comprehensive intervention.
Mobility. Mobility typifies arid zone pastoralism. It is the principal strategy employed for making best use of the resources on offer and for coping with fluctuation and spatial variation in rainfall and feed supply. Short range movements supplement longer range seasonal shifts. Some seasonal shifts are imposed by climatic or other imperatives (such as seasonal snow cover or lack of water), while others are voluntary, guided by the goals and predilections of the pastoralists concerned.
Restricting customary mobility usually reduces food security. It is particularly important to keep open transhumance routes and drought retreats that allow access to flood plains and areas of higher rainfall. Converting such areas to cropland does not improve food security if, through the loss of key resource areas, the whole of the regional pastoral system is thrown into disarray. Cattle-based systems, especially, can be decimated by the loss of just a few hundred hectares of flood plain.
That is not to say that customary mobility ensures optimal NRM. Voluntary movements can have their origins in factors unrelated to NRM, and there may be better alternatives. However, intervention still requires sensitivity, since to disrupt socially-driven patterns of movement (such as joining clan gatherings at a set time and place, or moving according to phases of the moon) may imply undermining customary authority that is essential to maintaining effective NRM overall.
Drought Management. Much of customary NRM is an exercise in drought management. Mobility is used both to avoid drought, by moving elsewhere when drought strikes, and to absorb drought, by seeking out unused grass or browse (whether left by design or because of relative unpalatability). But mobility is not the only coping mechanism. People, as well as livestock, can step up their use of bush foods. They can also ensure, with the help of natural selection, that their livestock are drought-tolerant; and societal welfare support mechanisms can be put to use to help those hardest hit by drought.
One feature of the drought management strategies of pastoralists is that they tend to be reactive rather than pre-emptive. Where external assistance can help is in developing early warning systems and drought preparedness. The strategic offtake of livestock has a place here, to allow animals to be removed before they become valueless and die. However, the design of offtake systems has to be adapted to meet the different circumstances of subsistence and trade-orientated systems.
External agencies also have a role in supporting restocking programmes post-drought. The safest approach is to assist in the distribution of local animals through the societal welfare support system. Importing animals and distributing them as government or NGO largesse runs the risk of aggravating grazing pressure with ill-adapted animals allocated to undeserving cases outside of societal control.
Administration. Another critical feature of customary NRM is that it is segmented, with different layers of pastoral society holding responsibility for different aspects of management. Historically, there are examples of strong leadership exercising tight control across the whole spectrum of NRM, but typically each resource (water, grazing, trees of value, etc) is managed separately, under the control of family or neighbourhood groups. Higher levels of societal structure are concerned primarily with maintaining territorial boundaries and societal ethics, and intervene locally only when ethical issues arise.
State governments may assume responsibilities in NRM, but seldom have the staff, knowledge or budget to administer NRM effectively in remote pastoral areas. They are best advised, therefore, to concentrate on providing an enabling framework and to encourage herders' organisations to manage the rest. Where pastoralists represent a linguistic and cultural minority, local government might usefully be groomed to provide necessary administrative support.
Further Improvement. Serious intervention in NRM calls for detailed knowledge of the pastoral systems concerned. Mostly this implies field study, because most texts treat pastoralism as homogenous or not much affected by the variations outlined earlier. Hence, when customary resource tenure is extolled, it is without differentiating tenure from access, or one resource from another. And when mobility is extolled, it is without analysis of the rationale for movement, or of how development should proceed when mobility is already curtailed. Moreover, pastoralism is often presented as "opportunistic range management". In practice, opportunism works well in wet-season grazing areas, but tends to be anti-social in dry-season grazing areas and anarchic when applied to the resources of others. It also brings much suffering to families, in the course of enabling societies to survive drought and other perturbations.
Sweeping assertions about pastoralism arise partly as a by-product of advocacy; of hammering home the point that customary practice is better suited to arid rangelands than ranch-style management. However, they arise also from the dearth of in-depth studies of the workings of pastoral systems and ecological processes. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) may suffice to get a process project started, letting monitoring data guide subsequent inputs, but embarking on development in a state of relative ignorance is always a high-risk strategy.
Improving understanding of ecological processes has particular priority in arid rangelands. The arguments that favour opportunistic range management focus too much on grass, relative to browse, and show little regard for the effect of periodicity in rainfall and for the successional processes that can be observed at work in some areas. Economic and social perspectives also have to be drawn into the interpretation of what constitutes overgrazing. A depleted range ecosystem may suit the present expectations of pastoralists, but if these expectations were to change, then management would need to shift rangelands closer to their natural state.
The implications of the foregoing for aid programmes and development generally are considered here in four parts, differentiating:
- generalities of food security in pastoral areas,
- the delivery of emergency relief to nomads,
- approaches to longer term pastoral development, and
- packaging pastoral development.
Specific implications for FAO are considered in the next main section.
Many of the generalities of food security apply universally. Thus, it is as necessary in pastoral areas as in other situations:
- to know the scale, cause and frequency of food deficiency;
- to differentiate endemic from episodic insecurity;
- to be in a state of preparedness for handling episodic insecurity; and
- to deliver food aid in a form acceptable to the recipients.
However, subsumed in these generalities are three points of particular importance when defining needs in pastoral areas:
Problem analysis should be based on standards appropriate to the socio-ecological context. There is no way that arid zone pastoralism can be made risk-free, or that pastoralists can enjoy (within their pastoral environment) the comforts and standards of living that might be considered rightful in other situations. To opt for a settled lifestyle and conveniences such as piped water in arid rangelands usually implies opting also for a significant loss in food security (a point already noted when discussing mobility).
Drought is a constant threat. Yet healthy pastoral systems (i.e. ones which can be considered viable) should include mechanisms to cope with all but unusually dry years. To invoke drought when rainfall is within its normal range of variation is to misdiagnose the cause of the hardships being experienced. (This applies no less in agricultural areas, where increasingly, with rising population, "drought" is being blamed when rainfall is well above average).
Customary diet is usually allowed to guide the form that food aid takes. In arid rangelands, however, where often it is lack of water (rather than grazing) that triggers famine, powdered milk cannot be offered, even to milk-subsistent pastoralists, unless supplies of potable water are also assured. Other implications for the delivery of famine relief are considered below.
Emergency food aid faces obvious logistical difficulties in remote areas that are lightly populated by mobile pastoralists. The problem is eased somewhat by the fact that famine in arid rangelands is associated most commonly with drought, when the people are already concentrated around the few permanent watering points where administrative centres are also located. But such concentrations are not automatic under all circumstances, and generally are to be avoided as damaging to rangeland resources.
Drought preparedness. Effective delivery of food aid is greatly assisted by maintaining a state of preparedness. This is not feasible in all cases, but there is little excuse for being taken unawares by drought, when drought is the only certainty in arid rangelands. It is not expensive to set up an early warning system, or to decide and delegate responsibilities for dealing with different intensities of drought. The cost lies almost exclusively in supplies and transport.
Remote sensing is particularly useful in extensive rangelands for tracking weather systems and ground cover, and so for providing early warning of impending drought. The cost-effectiveness of the technology means that there is not much danger of it not being used: the greater danger is to fall into the trap of believing that remote sensing is sufficient in itself. Ground monitoring of environmental and socio-economic indicators remains an essential component of effective early warning systems.
Integrated response mechanisms. Because of the size and remoteness of range areas, it is also important to have an integrated response mechanism that ensures timely action by all players, from herders' organisations to the higher echelons of government. Emergency supplies (not just food but also drugs and water bowsers) should be held at district or sub-district level, and as much responsibility as possible should be delegated to communities.
A decentralised response system not only speeds the delivery of aid but also avoids over-concentration of livestock. Concentrations of livestock around food outlets inevitably cause environmental damage. Nor does it help to feed the livestock themselves, unless only a few key animals are fed, since routine feeding causes animal numbers to build up beyond the capacity of the rangeland to support them. Better is to use food aid in tandem with livestock marketing; with food aid providing the dietary stopgap that enables families to relinquish livestock, and with marketing targetting lower grade animals so that the best breeding stock (their welfare better assured by the offtake) are available for rapid rebuilding of food security.
Emergencies unrelated to drought. When famine is due to loss of livestock to disease, or to any factor other than drought, then different relief strategies may be needed. When water is widely available, the distribution of emergency supplies is likely to have to follow suit, with the possibility too of greater use being made of powdered milk in relief diets. But if calls for emergency relief are constantly arising, then some basic inadequacy is indicated in the pastoral system(s) concerned. The need then is for a development programme that increases the support capacity of the system, or provides an alternative livelihood for part of the population. This is the focus of the next section.
Permanent improvement in food security in arid rangelands can be sought in many ways; as is reflected in the variety of projects implemented over the years. The options listed below draw on this project experience, covering both the themes that attract planners and those that appear most useful.
Settlement has undeniable attractions, in facilitating economic diversification and the advance of civilization. When governments have sought to sedentarise pastoralists, it has often been for pettier reasons, and with disastrous results, but it is significant that pastoralists themselves are now increasingly regarding "nomadism" as uncivilized and settlement as preferable.
Yet settlement in arid rangelands can only bring benefit if (a) it is restricted to localities with a water supply sufficient to support it, and (b) the livestock of the area remain fully mobile. Linking cropping with new settlement is seldom a feasible or sustainable option; though intensifying agriculture where it already draws on a major water supply (such as the Nile river) is clearly a step towards food security.
Water development, aimed at allowing pastoralists to stay longer or to range wider in their grazing areas, is helpful locally. However, it is a fallacy to suppose that rangeland productivity is increased by bringing all areas within command of permanent water. In most pastoral systems, it is easier to sustain productivity if separate areas are reserved for use at different seasons of the year, with wet-season grazing areas served by water supplies that are available only at that time of year.
A concentration of boreholes, tapping a large reserve of unexploited groundwater, might form the basis of a new settlement or dry-season grazing area. But single boreholes, introduced into wet-season grazing areas, can be no more than a palliative, and are more likely to be the cause of dispute and disruption before becoming the focus of slum settlement and overgrazing.
Security of tenure, interpreted broadly so as to include safety from incursion and land appropriation, can be as effective as any provision in improving food security. Several cases could be cited where pastoral groups have lost land to others, or are constrained from using rangeland nominally available to them because of incursion and banditry. The form that remedial action should take varies greatly, from improving border security to organising communities in self-protection to reforming land law so as to protect customary rights. What is certain is that continued loss of access to resources can nullify all other measures to sustain food security.
Institutional reform usually has to extend well beyond the area of land law, if pastoralists are to receive the external support needed to maintain food security. In critical areas such as animal and human health, effective service delivery is likely to require a devolvement of responsibility to the private sector, not least to community-based local organisations.
To establish local organisations equipped for this, or for any other specific task, requires consultation and perhaps revision of corporate law, so as to arrive at forms of organisation that are grounded in customary procedures and yet have the legal status needed for the job at hand. And it may be necessary to ensure an enhanced role for local government, in guiding this process and in delivering other services.
Marketing facilities and incentives can contribute to food security by increasing the income of pastoralists from sales and so enhancing their ability to purchase foodstuffs in times of need. However, not all pastoral systems respond equally to this approach. The greatest response can be expected from pastoralists with holdings of saleable livestock well in excess of subsistence needs.
One way of widening the appeal of marketing is to subordinate commercial interests to the goal of removing animals when drought is pending or current. Even in pastoral systems where animals are usually too valuable to sell, sale may be preferable to letting animals die. There is also the possibility of offering livestock credits instead of cash, with credits exchangeable for animals post-drought. Most of these marketing options imply a degree of subsidisation. A prerequisite (also when planning privatisation of services) is to assess what pastoral households, rich and poor, can afford to pay.
Marketing should not be seen exclusively in the context of livestock. Arid rangelands often yield gums and other products of commercial value (as well as bush foods that can contribute directly to food security). However, it should not be overlooked that, whereas the offtake of livestock reduces grazing pressure, the collection of plant materials is consumptive and can lead to over-exploitation.
Innovation in resource management has always appealed to planners as a means of improving productivity and hence food security in pastoral areas. However, seeding and other measures to improve natural vegetation are seldom practicable in arid rangelands, except where soil-moisture relations are favourable or can be improved through water spreading or harvesting. And such sites are also the only ones suited to crop production, and so may already be taken for that purpose.
Breed improvement is also constrained. The constraint lies in the need to subjugate yield to drought tolerance and stamina. Selection in indigenous breeds is usually worthwhile, though not where food security is better served by effecting a change of species, e.g. from cattle to camels. The latter option would apply in environments where camels can stay in milk when cattle would starve if not fed.
Reliance on imported feed, as a means of keeping animals alive, is always problematic. An alternative to feeding may lie in the adoption of a rapid rotational grazing system, of the type promoted by the Center for Holistic Resource Management (at Albuquerque, in New Mexico), but only where there is potential for grazing management to lead to greater biodiversity.
Wildlife utilisation features in all pastoral systems, if only to the extent of utilising natural vegetation for fuel, dietary supplements and a few other products. But often there is potential for more. In scenic landscapes, and where there is a varied natural fauna, the potential may extend to forms of eco-tourism which, through income generated, could add substantially to food security. Where hunting is permissible, meat as well as revenue could accrue. Of course, maximising benefits from wildlife implies maintaining wildlife habitats, which usually also implies more conservative range management than presently pertains.
Human resource development needs to accompany other approaches. This is not just a matter of schooling pastoralists in literacy and new skills, but also of enabling all those with development responsibility to appreciate the nature of pastoralism and of arid zone ecology. The latter task is a major undertaking. It implies (i) changing entrenched attitudes, (ii) funding more systems studies (so as to gain new insights into NRM and ecological processes) and (iii) restructuring curricula at all levels of education. And much hinges on the outcome. If attitudes cannot be changed, then arid rangelands have a bleak future. It is far-fetched to hope that future technology will be able to produce rainfall or water at will; and the alternative, of abandoning the arid half of the world to nature and absorbing its population elsewhere, is but to substitute a political rock for a technological hard place.
In practice, sustained food security will be sought, not through just one measure but through a combination of measures melded into a medium-to-long-term development plan. More so than in other environments, development in arid rangelands requires a process approach, with phased inputs and comprehensive monitoring of each step.
Formulating development paths. The first step, before any commitment is made, is to assess the pastoral system(s) concerned and to decide if there is a reasonable prospect for achieving sustainable NRM without relocation of people into other areas or employments. That decision greatly affects the development pathway which has to be sketched out in order to establish the inputs with which to start. In the process, it is necessary also to agree the degree of mobility and the standards of food security that are being sought.
The formulation of likely development paths is a participatory exercise that draws fully on indigenous knowledge, and supplements this with wider knowledge of options and their implications. The wider perspective needs to take account of the regional framework within which development is to proceed, having regard for resource availability and interactions (e.g. the need for watershed protection to safeguard downstream agriculture). The result is not a blueprint for action, but simply a means of agreeing the direction that development is to take and the inputs appropriate to start the process. Experience, backed by monitoring data and annual or biennial reviews, then determines subsequent inputs and amendments to the original pathway.
Community participation. When assessing pastoral systems, particular attention needs to be given to existing social-territorial organisation, so that this knowledge can be applied to the identification of groupings and forms of organisation to draw into the development process. Although participation can grow in the course of development, it helps to involve appropriate groups from the start, having regard for the resources and areas of responsibility relevant to the development process envisaged.
In that context, it should be appreciated that pastoral systems often overlap, either when separate societies share a common resource or when the poorer members of society operate a system different from the rest (e.g. with goats instead of cattle, ranging less widely and accessing different resources). Groupings and forms of organisation need to take account of shared interests as well as the management requirements of individual resources.
In principle it might be argued that communities should be left to organise themselves as they see fit. In practice, however, they can only deal effectively with government and commercial institutions if the forms of organisation they adopt are recognised as being legally competent to own property and access credit. And in addition to ensuring organisations that fit the needs of specific resources and enterprises, there is need to ensure higher-level organisations that can advocate effectively for the pastoral perspective over the imposition of piecemeal sectoral "solutions".
Only briefly, from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, did FAO maintain a comprehensive programme in range resource management and pastoral development. The programme, with UNDP funding, was led by range management specialists and so carried that bias, but at project level it showed participatory and interdisciplinary features that were relatively advanced for those times.
Divisional inputs have continued to be made in aspects of resource management and institutional development, but FAO's contribution to pastoral development has undoubtedly suffered over the past 20 years from the fact that no division or group has held overall operational responsibility in this area. Nor has there been a permanent inter-departmental working group with this responsibility.
While Special Programmes offer one avenue for addressing development issues that transcend disciplinary boundaries, there has been no such programme as yet that has impacted much on arid rangelands. The Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) may have some prospect of impacting on pastoral areas, but not immediately, as noted later in this report. First it is proposed to review what are the priority areas for attention, if there is to be improvement in food security in pastoral areas.
Several of the priorities considered here were also identified in FAO's booklet on dryland development strategies (FAO 1993). The emphasis here is on specific subject areas needing attention.
Security of tenure commands top priority. Unless pastoralists have access to the resources that nominally are theirs, there is no basis for food security nor scope for other interventions. One area in which FAO can help is in providing advice on legal reform, backed by inputs from technical divisions. Technical advice that is offered in ignorance of customary and statutory law is virtually worthless; while legal reform that is made without reference to the rationale for mobility, and other aspects of arid zone ecology, is almost certain to do more harm than good.
Regional planning warrants more attention than currently it is given. Only when there is an appreciation of regional groundwater resources, and of the distribution of people in relation to resources, is it possible to formulate development paths for pastoral areas that combine local and public good. More systems studies would also help towards the same end. An example of the type of study required is given in the consultant's earlier report on how FAO might contribute to pastoral development in East Africa (Pratt, 1993).
Training and curricula development, to help correct misconceptions concerning pastoralism and arid zone ecology, also commands priority. An outline for a training course in pastoral development is included in the report just cited, though there is scope for much more than this, in helping with curricula development at both primary and higher levels of education.
Other inputs, of a more technical nature, are probably best deferred until the more basic problems are being addressed. Areas in which there is scope for technical inputs include:
- increased use and improved husbandry of camels and goats,
- the management of browse resources,
- further testing of Holistic Resource Management (HRM), and
- safeguarding indigenous knowledge and societal welfare support systems.
Additional ideas on what is important in stimulating pastoral development will shortly be available in guidelines being issued by The World Bank.
Of the countries so far incorporated within SPFS, about half have extensive areas of arid rangeland and support significant numbers of pastoralists. In total, there are some 40 countries which support extensive pastoralism nationwide or in their drier and remoter areas. For present purposes, three countries are reviewed, to assess the manner in which pilot phase SPFS activities might be expanded to bring explicit benefit to pastoralists. These are Kenya, Mauritania and Niger, all of which have more arid rangeland than farmland.
Kenya is a case where all the emphasis is being placed on improvement in a few crops grown in high-potential localities. The exploratory mission (FAO, 1994) acknowledged that less than 20% of Kenya receives rainfall sufficient for sustained annual crop production, but the strategy that has been adopted is based on consolidated demand statistics and the conclusion that "of the staple foods, Kenya is deficient in maize, wheay, rice, vegetable oil and sugar production: meat and milk are more or less in balance with demand". Maize and soyabean have been selected as the main target crops during the 3-year pilot phase.
There is provision to extend coverage to "additional crops and areas" (Kenya Government, 1995), but no indication that coverage will extend to the drier half of the country; to the arid rangelands which, historically, have been the areas most frequently in need of famine relief. Perhaps it can be assumed that, if Kenya can return to self-sufficiency in staple crops, then it will be easier to extend famine relief to pastoral areas; but this is not the stated intention of the programme (which has been given the title of Kenyan Accelerated Food Production Programme, KAFPROD) and nor does a hypothetical availability of surplus grain in the highlands do much to ensure food security in the pastoral districts.
It happens that there is a pastoral development project just starting in the northern districts with World Bank assistance, so perhaps FAO is assuming that the food security of Kenya's pastoralists is the responsibility of that project and not of SPFS. But it would seem logical, in countries with diverse resource use systems, for SPFS to include provision for developing food security strategies for each production zone, and not to be guided solely by national statistics.
Mauritania and Niger both seem destined to have a livestock component in their national programmes. The pilot phase of SPFS in Mauritania, while emphasising cereals and market gardening, includes a proposal for village livestock development in the vicinity of Nouakchott which is now under consideration by the SPFS Review Committee in Rome. The same committee has also suggested that Niger should place greater emphasis on livestock. If that activity is confined, like the crop programme, to two locations in the wetter belt of the country, then it will not bring significant benefit to the pastoral zone of Niger, but at least the door is open.
In the Sahelian countries, as in Kenya, there is need to delve beneath the surface of national statistics in order to quantify needs and startegies at the level of major production zones, including that represented by arid rangelands. If food security programmes are to stop short of building security into pastoral production systems, then they must at least be explicit on how continued famine relief is to be delivered to those areas and people.
Overall, there is a strong case for SPFS to do something to make pastoral areas less dependent on famine relief. Often these areas lie several hundred kilometres from administrative centres and croplands, with poor access for vehicles, so that external relief is a costly and inefficient option. If SPFS were to make one contribution, beyond helping in the formulation of food security strategies appropriate to each production zone, it could usefully be in helping national authorities to create pastoral organisations with authority to maintain territorial rights and to exercise control in NRM.
This relates to the "security of tenure" theme already mentioned,and typically involves a 7-step approach in any given pastoral situation (from Pratt, 1993):
(1) What size of group (social unit) should be entitled in respect of what land area (e.g. "homeland", dry season grazing area or total grazing orbit)?
(2) By what form of title would land security be best achieved (freehold, leasehold or other)?
(3) To what form of pastoral organisation would title be given (society, cooperative or what; registered in law or with the local council or whom)?
(4) What form(s) of constitution would apply (covering rights, responsibilities, succession, etc; derived from existing statutes, codified from customary law or written afresh)?
(5) What provisions would be included to cover inter-group relations and common access to grazing and water?
(6) By what adjudication process would land rights (as set out above) be established?
(7) How does all of the foregoing relate to existing land and corporate law?
Already SPFS in Kenya envisages that KAFPROD will be incorporated as a company or NGO - an innovation of exciting potential - so is it not time to think in terms of greater private sector control in pastoral development also?
FAO, 1993. Key aspects of strategies for the sustainable development of drylands. Rome: Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
FAO,1994. Republic of Kenya. Special Programme on Fpood Production for Food Security. Exploratory Mission Report. Rome: FAO Investment Centre Report No: 141/94 SP-KEN 38.
FAO, 1996. Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS). Rationale, objectives and approach. Rome: FAO Document SPFS/DOC/4-Rev.1.
Kenya Government, 1995. Accelerated Food Crop Production, KAFPROD. Draft Report of 30 May 1995 of the Steering Committee for FAO Special Programme on Food Production.
Pratt, D J, 1993. The future of the Regional Working Group on Grazing Respources in East Africa in relation to rangeland resources and pastoral development. Consultancy Report. Rome: FAO/AGPC.
