Economic Valuation of Rangeland Management Practices in the Pastoral System of Tana River County, Kenya

Abstract

Economic valuation of rangelands has been recognized as an important tool that can help decision-makers evaluate the tradeoffs between the social welfare losses of inaction and the net welfare gains of alternative actions against rangeland degradation. This points to the need to consider natural capital in decision-making on rangeland use. Both market value and simulated market approaches were used to emphasize the economic value of rangeland-based ecosystems and highlight the economic benefits of sustainable rangeland management in Tana River County, Kenya. The study focused on the economic analysis of pastoralists’ preferences for rangeland management practices, the economic values attached (welfare impacts) to the preferred rangeland management practices, and the determinants of their adoption, as well as the socio-economic factors influencing the willingness to pay for sustainable rangeland management. The findings of the study indicate that pastoral communities derive positive utility from connected systems that enable reciprocal access to resources in both wet and dry seasons. Pastoralism adapts to the spatial and temporal variability of pasture and water through herd mobility; hence, the positive utility derived from practices that contribute to the availability of adequate water and pasture across the seasons. Interventions aimed at achieving sustainable rangeland management should therefore consider enabling mobility as a management strategy. The results show that pastoralists would prefer to have a rangeland system in which: there are adequate water pans to harvest and store water; there is a dry season grazing reserve; overgrazing is limited to avoid degrading the grazing fields; and there is enough forage yield and water for the animals. Because livestock production is a viable source of livelihood for pastoralists in tropical rangelands, they were willing to pay more to have enough water and pasture for their animals. Membership in community groups, income, and the main source of livelihood had a higher influence on the willingness to pay. Regarding the adoption of various sustainable rangeland management practices, such as soil and water conservation practices, the results demonstrate that the adoption process has a social element and involves collegial interactions. Pastoralists require technical know-how and skills, capital, and organizational support for the successful adoption and use of water harvesting systems. It is therefore important to design and develop alternative, effective policy instruments and mechanisms, strong institutional options for extension services, technical assistance, training, and capacity building that will facilitate the adoption of rangeland practices through participatory practices to ensure a better fit to the needs of pastoralists. These findings demonstrate that ecosystem services, despite typically being outside of markets, have a significant economic value in the rangelands. As a result, analyses of the benefits and costs of the rangeland options are biased toward development over conservation, and planning efforts miss potential win-win areas and associated opportunities to finance conservation of rangeland resources in innovative ways. It is therefore important to ensure that both ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation are incorporated into decision-making to an extent that is commensurate with their importance. This would provide concrete arguments as to why stewardship of rangeland biodiversity is crucial to pastoral livelihoods, thereby reducing rangeland degradation. Not all factors were, however, included in the economic valuation and assessment of this study due to limitations of time, capacity, and capital. For example, the value of rangelands in carbon sequestration was not included, although this is an important ecological service. However, the valuation of carbon sequestration requires time series data and not a static data set, which would not have been possible during the short period of the survey. These estimates need to be included in the economic valuation of rangelands and remain a key area in need of further research.