Land Tenure and the Sustainability of Pastoral Productive Systems: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of the Andean Altiplano and the East African Savannah

Abstract

Executive Summary

Pastoralism is the main production system practised in rangelands and drylands, providing livelihoods to an estimated 500 million people globally. Alternative land production systems are not feasible in these areas due to harsh weather and climatic conditions. Nowadays pastoral communities face challenges to accessing land and mounting pressure on their livelihoods due to misconceptions about pastoralism and global trends including population growth and climate change. This paper analyses the correlation between pastoral land tenure systems and the sustainability of pastoralism as a production system. We compare two regions in particular - the Andean Altiplano and the Kenyan Savannah – where we identify five types of collective land regime. We explore how these land tenure systems have changed over time and analyse the impacts on the sustainability of pastoralism within these very different ecological, social and cultural environments. We use a comparative case study approach to our analysis because it provides the possibility of isolating causal mechanisms for individual cases as well as constructing valid generalisations beyond the study areas. We find that collective land tenure is positively correlated with the sustainability of pastoral production systems. In contrast, individualisation of land tenure discourages these practices despite the fact that public policy in Kenya and the Andean region has favoured this process over recent years, thereby threatening the very survival of pastoral communities. We therefore recommend that public policy should be re-oriented to help pastoralist communities maintain collective land tenure regimes. In particular, we recommend policies aimed at strengthening community governance mechanisms to effectively manage land and supporting collective action among herders to improve access to markets and their trading power.