Examines how pastoral peoples imagine, or even design, their
futures under the pressure of changing environments and large-scale
government projects. In East Africa and beyond, pastoral groups
find themselves and their livelihoods under increasing threat when
dealing with rapid environmental change. On the one hand, they
contemplate major upheaval as a result of landscape and climate
change on a scale never seen before. At the same time, these
often-marginalised groups find themselves subsumed by the wider
interests of national political economies prioritising new
investment in land as well as encouraging tourism. This book
investigates one such group - the nomadic pastoralists in East
Pokot in north-west Kenya - and traces their social and ecological
transformation over the past two hundred years to show how modern
challenges are linked to the past history and also shape the
perceptions of pastoral futures. In East Pokot the grass bush
savannah upon which the pastoral lifestyle depends has strongly
declined over a long period of time, with encroachment of acacia.
Though traditionally cattle-rearing, its people have been forced to
diversify into raising other browsing animals as well as cattle
husbandry. The development efforts of the Kenyan government to use
natural resources have also threatened their environment and their
way of life. Bringing a long view to the history of
human-environmental relations, the author reveals a more complex
picture of change that, contrary to earlier assumptions, is not due
exclusively to the pastoralists' pasture management, but also to
the extinction of wildlife populations in the region, which were
hunted heavily in colonial times. Attempts to move beyond Pokot
territory, to the regions west of Lake Baringo and to the
hard-fought Laikipia Plateau, have often been compromised by
violent conflicts. While a younger generation looks to develop new
sources of income through the job opportunities created by
geothermal energy production, and diversify into other agricultural
activities, this has also brought a dynamic social transformation:
increasing production and sale of alcohol, decreasingly nomadic
lifestyle, growing differences between the older and younger
generations, and so on. Contributing to debates on future rural
Africa, ecological history and environmental change, the book will
appeal to anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians
and development scholars. Published in association with the
Collaborative Research Centre FUTURE RURAL AFRICA, funded by the
German Research Council (DFG).
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