Socio Ecological Resilience and Pastoral Land Use Change in Semi-arid Lands in Kajiado County Kenya
Abstract
Since the year 2000, a range of stakeholders and the Kenyan Government have tried to
limit the land use/cover change and offer guided development, on the premise that
Kajiado North is pastoral and acts as a wildlife dispersal area and migratory corridor
for Nairobi National Park. A Wildlife Conservation Lease Programme (WLCP) was
started in year 2000 and Kitengela-Isinya-Kipeto land use master plan (LUMP) drafted
in 2008 for the period 2008-2028. However not much has been achieved with respect
to the objectives.
This study was inspired to find the status of land use master plan and wildlife
conservation lease program through the following objectives; Ascertain the extent of
land use/cover change in Kajiado North Sub-County for the period 1980-2010,
ascertain the socio ecological factors that contribute to and/or impede land use/cover
change in Kajiado North Sub-County, establish how the land use/cover change has
impacted on ecosystem services and resilient livelihoods in semi-arid lands and
analyse the impacts of the household and community resilient pathways on expected
outcomes in relation to LUMP and WLCP. The study used the DPSIR framework to
analyse the driving forces, pressures, the state, the impacts and the response towards
land use cover change in Kajiado North. Landsat imageries were used to analyse land
use/ cover change for the period 1980-2010. Household survey questionnaire, key
informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussions (FGDs), and in depth interviews
were used to collect primary data at household and community levels. Supervised
classification using ENVI 4.7 software of Landsat imageries yielded seven land
use/cover classes: rangeland, bare ground, rocky areas, water bodies, built-up areas,
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crop land, woodlots and riverine vegetation. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square and
regression analysis were applied at 95% confidence levels in describing the trends in
land use/ cover changes for the period 1980-2010. Landsat images analysis for years
1984, 2004 and 2010 present the state of the environment whereby significant
declining changes (p<0.001) of rangeland 31.42% were observed. While increasing
significant (p<0.001) changes were observed in built-up, crop land, woodlots and
riverine vegetation. Overall the result indicates an increase in fragmentation due to
population increase accompanied with degradation, as 34% of the respondents
indicated. The driving forces were the demand for land in the community due
population growth and migration to facilitate livelihood activities. The spatial
regression analysis using ArcGIS 9.3 software on land use/cover change maps results
showed that the urban centres had an influence of up to 93% on the change in land
use/cover while roads had up to 33% and rivers up to 22 % by the year 2010.
The stresses on the environment were experienced in form of competition for
resources and decrease in mobility/ accessibility to resources. The fast appreciation of
land was given as a major challenge since the indigenous people are tempted by
speculators who project huge returns with the proposed infrastructures like standard
gauge railway and Konza Technocity. There was no good will to enforce LUMP while
the incentives for WCLP were not adequate in compensating those who leased the
land due to the high value of land and alternative uses. Therefore to stop peri-urban
fragmentation of areas at the fringe of national parks it will be appropriate to create
buffer zones with compatible land use systems that support/integrate wildlife
conservation.
Publisher
University Of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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