Historical ecologies of overgrazing in Kenya

The spectre of “overgrazing” looms large in historical and political narratives of ecological degradation in savannah ecosystems. While pastoral exploitation is a conspicuous driver of landscape variability and modification, assumptions that such change is inevitable or necessarily negative deserve to be continuously evaluated and challenged. With reference to three case studies in Kenya – the Laikipia Plateau, the Lake Baringo basin and the Amboseli ecosystem – Boles et al. argue in their paper “Historical ecologies of pastoralist overgrazing in Kenya: long-term perspectives on cause and effect” (published in 2019 in Human Ecology 47: 419–434) that the impacts of pastoralism on land depend on locally specific environmental, political and cultural conditions. The impacts are due more to restrictions on herd mobility driven by misguided conservation and economic policies and not to pastoralist inefficiency.

The authors review the application of “overgrazing” in interpretations of the archaeological record and assess its relevance for how we interpret past socio-environmental dynamics. This includes a discussion of non-equilibrium ecological theory referring to grazing systems. Any discussion of overgrazing, or any form of human-environment interaction, must acknowledge the context in terms of time and space and must account for historical variability in landscape development.

Posted on 12 May 2020 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure