Herder knowledge of landscape assessments in arid rangelands in northern Tanzania
Introduction
Pastoral communities worldwide have in-depth knowledge of the traditional methods of rangeland assessments, which in turn influence patterns of land use (Mills et al., 2002). On a daily basis, herders monitor the status of rangelands (Homewood and Rodgers, 1991) and determine grazing for the multi-livestock species (Cotton, 1996). They do so without the benefit of the modern science of range management and/or the integration of the traditional systems of assessments into scientific methods. On the contrary, the modern science of range management has neglected herder participation, largely due to the perception of official resource managers that herder knowledge lacks objectivity (Brown, 1971). The sceptics consider herder knowledge to be locality specific and unsuitable for testing research hypotheses under varied environmental conditions. Opposite perspectives also exist (e.g. Boling and Schulte, 1999; Coppolillo, 2000; Fernandez-Gimenez, 2000; Lykke, 2000; Oba and Kotile, 2001; Mapinduzi et al., 2003), which suggest that herder knowledge can be widely applied in participatory research (e.g. Reid et al., 2000; Wezel and Haigis, 2000; Mills et al., 2002; Turner and Hiernaux, 2002; Reed and Dougill, 2002; Verlinden and Dayot, 2005; Sheuyange et al., 2005).
The roles played by herder participation in rangeland assessments may be analyzed using folk systematic and socio-cultural perceptions. Berlin (1973) used folk systematic for analyzing the traditional systems of classification. The folk systematic recognizes the principles of grouping, naming and using linguistic descriptions of organisms. Berlin suggests that in the folk systematic, “pre-scientific communities” named the organisms by applying binomial names with descriptive modifiers (i.e. the name with two parts—the generic and the adjective modifier that describes the object) or monomial descriptions that used a generic name alone. In terms of landscape classification, herders used descriptive names, inferring colour of soil and the vegetation type or topography (Verlinden and Dayot, 2005). The names could be applied locally or used to describe geographically distributed landscapes. The folk systematic has not been applied previously to traditional systems of landscape classifications.
In terms of socio-cultural perspectives, landscape classification is used as the basis for assessing grazing resources. Given that landscapes are the products of local knowledge, the decision-making on management may be conceptualized in terms of current and historical land use. Landscape changes reflect and shape social values, which in turn influence the way landscapes are assessed, monitored and managed (Mills et al., 2002). The local herders characterized landscapes as being in “bad” (degradable) or “good” (non-degradable) condition (Fitzhardinge, 1999). To understand the interpretations of landscape change by herders, societal perceptions of environmental change should be analyzed (e.g. Blaikie, 1998; Adger et al., 2001), and the consistency of herder assessments should be evaluated using empirical field data. We investigated a participatory research protocol for integrating the indigenous knowledge of the Maasai herders and the scientific methods to achieve two goals: (1) to understand the Maasai's indigenous systems of local landscape classifications, and (2) to evaluate the consistency of herders’ knowledge for interpreting spatial changes in vegetation indicators across heterogeneous landscapes in Selela, northern Tanzania.
The Maasai livestock have grazed the arid and semi-arid rangelands in the southern Kenya–northern Tanzania region for millennia. In northern Tanzania, the Il-kisongo Maasai have access to well-defined grazing resources during the wet and dry seasons, while during drought years they crossed through neighbours’ territories (Århem, 1985; Homewood and Rodgers, 1991; Agnew et al., 2000). Land use by multi-species livestock, comprised of cattle, sheep and goats, is opportunistic in response to unpredictable rainfall, while regular movements are also possible between key grazing resources. At the regional level, grazing transhumance is between the hot arid (orpukel-lengolol), the semi-arid (orpukel le-supuko) and the cool sub-humid (osupuko) eco-climatic zones. At the landscape level, grazing transhumance depends on diverse micro-topography (Hodgson and Schroeder, 2002; Mapinduzi et al., 2003), with livestock grazing mimicking the wet–dry season grazing movements (Århem, 1985; Homewood and Rodgers, 1991). Additionally, the Maasai have practiced the preservation of calf-pastures near homesteads (Hodgson and Schroeder, 2002).
During the previous century, these traditional systems of land use have been transformed by official land use policies of wildlife conservation, expansion of cultivation and the transformation of traditional communal land use to private ranches (Århem, 1985; Homewood, 1995; Kimani and Pickard, 1998; Campbell et al., 2000). The changes have disrupted the traditional transhumance systems, resulting in greater grazing pressure at local landscape levels. Despite the adverse changes to traditional patterns of land use, the Maasai are a resilient society and continue to practice the wet–dry season systems of range management, albeit at local landscape scales. Proper understanding of land use impacts on local landscapes would therefore require addressing three important questions: (1) What was the traditional basis of landscape classification and herder perceptions of landscape change? (2) What were the criteria used by the herders to relate historical changes in plant species composition and changes in livestock grazing preferences? (3) What were the effects of grazing pressure gradients and seasonal grazing on the spatial change of vegetation indicators? The contribution of the current study will be to test participatory research methods for integrating herder knowledge into scientific methods as well as to establish possible community participatory monitoring regimes in the Selela rangelands.
Section snippets
Study area
The herder participatory study was conducted between October and November 2002. The Selela site (03°S and 035°E) is located in the southern branch of the Great East African Rift Valley (Pratt and Gwynne, 1977). The region has complex landforms resulting from folding, faulting, volcanic eruptions and erosion. The soils are young alluvium mixed with materials from past volcanic eruptions (Hathout, 1983). The climate is arid with low annual rainfall and high inter-annual variability. The
Herder perceptions of landscape change
The Maasai system of landscape classification was based upon diverse environmental indicators, socio-cultural valuation and land use. Of the 15 landscape associations, 10 were classified using landforms and topographic criteria. Four were named according to vegetation type, one by soil/rock colour and the others by management type (Table 1). The rules of landscape classification followed the folk systematic model. The classification placed the landscapes under two groupings. The first category
Herder perceptions of landscape change
The traditional system of landscape classification reflected herder familiarity with their environment (Western and Dunne, 1979; Fernandez-Gimenez, 2000; Oba et al., 2000a; Oba and Kotile, 2001; Mapinduzi et al., 2003; Sheuyange et al., 2005). The knowledge of landscape classification was used to integrate indigenous knowledge into scientific methods for environmental assessments. Landscape classification reflects cultural values and personal experiences while emphasizing the ecological
Conclusion
In the rangelands of East Africa, where environmental problems are often associated with pastoralist land use, the joint assessments by pastoralists and ecologists may play an important role in land use planning. Herder knowledge could be used to test specific management hypotheses. We implemented a research protocol involving the Maasai herders and scientific methods for assessing the impacts of traditional systems of land use on landscape change in terms of changes in vegetation and livestock
Acknowledgements
The staff of the National Herbarium, Arusha town, helped with the identification of plant specimens. We thank Arnold Mapinduzi for his help with the fieldwork and Zabron A. Kengera for some of the interviews used in this article. The Maasai herders shared their knowledge in the participatory research. Funds for the fieldwork and report writing were provided by the projects on “Perceptions of Landscape Change” (Research Council of Norway, Project no: 14683/720) and “Community Participation in
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