Restoring the rangelands after the drought will take short and long-term measures.

The most important step is to provide land, water and personal security for rangeland families. Most still have no title to their land or guarantees on resource use. No serious investment will be made in the rangelands until tenure and rights are secured. Government must also remove illegal weapons and stamp out the cattle rustling and banditry that are destabilizing northern Kenya.

Along with security, government must invest in roads, communications, livestock and agricultural extension services, value-added farming and ranching industries, commercial development, market outlets, drought insurance schemes and an expansion of credit services, small loans and saving societies. The cell phone has done wonders to ease the plight of pastoralists in the 2009 drought. If the low credit limit on phone transfers were lifted, it would stimulate commerce among thousands of rural families who have taken to digital transactions for lack of banking facilities.

We must also face the hard reality that land is too scarce to support the existing rangelands population. Top priority must therefore be placed on speeding up the stalled economic and demographic transition and preventing an even worse poverty trap. Rather than add millions more to our urban slums, we should invest in basic services, infrastructure, family planning clinics and training in order to diversify livelihoods in our rural towns like Isiolo, Mandera and Lokichogio.

Rangeland restoration and development also calls for rebuilding the strong social networks and institutions fractured by the collapse of traditional governance and the failure of central government to fill the void. The most urgently needed are agro-pastoral producer bodies, landowner associations and development forums.

A number of start-up institutions are making headway. They include the South Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) and the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), both dedicated to improving livestock practices, conserving the land, diversifying livelihoods and promoting the development of women and youth groups. Each has set up wildlife conservancies, tourism enterprises and begun pasture management and livestock development programs. SORALO has set up a cattlemen’s association and a resource centre to monitor rangeland conditions using local assessors. In collaboration with the African Conservation Centre, the centre is conducting drought surveys, setting up a drought warning system and exploring mitigation measures.

Finally, we must explore ways to avoid subdivision into small plots causing even worse damage. Evidence from rangeland studies shows that seasonal use of pastures and grass banking improves land and livestock health and resilience to drought. We should therefore explore reciprocal grazing systems of the sort adopted by Australian ranches to counter drought. Traditional reciprocal arrangements among pastoralists lend themselves to such grazing plans.

Unless we build the capacity to restore and conserve the rangelands now, future droughts will be far more devastating. If we do act now, we also lay the ground work to counter climate change. Kenya stands to benefit by linking the two. The rangelands, after all account for 70% of our total wood production, the equivalent as a carbon sink and offer our largest source of renewable energy. By tapping the global carbon market, growing wood lots and producing biomass fuels, wind and solar energy, and by conserving grass banks and opening up grass trading markets, pastoralists will boost their incomes and ease their transition from subsistence to commercial husbandry. Adding wildlife conservancies and ecotourism to their portfolio of options will help diversify the rangeland economy and build resilience to drought and climate change.

Appeared in the Daily Nation October 1st 2009 as: A Profile of What Could Become the Country’s Irreversible Tragedy