Pastoral land alienation in Southern Ethiopia

Because of misconceptions about pastoral production in Ethiopia, policymakers regard pastoral lands as underused and needing ‘development’. Policies have favoured externally imposed development schemes that often expropriate pastoralists in favour of large-scale commercial activities. Resource alienation and curtailment of mobility have made the pastoral systems less resilient.

The paper “Putting pastoralists on the policy agenda: land alienation in southern Ethiopia” by Eyasu Elias & Feyera Abdi (2010, 22pp, published as IIED Gatekeeper 145) reports on research among pastoralist communities in Southern Ethiopia. They found that livestock numbers are declining, land degradation is increasing, people are becoming more vulnerable to drought and famine, and resource-based conflicts are becoming more severe. The pastoralist way of life is making way for sedentary farming and enclosed private grazing land. These changes are due mainly to projects such as commercial sugar plantations and declaration of the Awash National Park, which prevent pastoralists from accessing their traditional grazing and watering areas.

The authors suggest to support pastoralists’ efforts to diversify their livelihoods, to allow the communities displaced by the sugar enterprises and national park to benefit from these initiatives, to promote land-tenure legislation specific to pastoral areas, to protect and promote pastoralists’ culture and practice of mobility to ensure effective use of dispersed dryland resources, to give legal backing to customary institutions, to recognise group user rights, and to integrate ecological considerations into land policies.

Posted on 15 March 2022 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure