Decentralization of Pastoral Resources Management and its Effects on Environmental Degradation and Poverty Experience from Northern Kenya

Abstract

This chapter explores these issues in the Hurri Hills area of Marsabit District, where externally imposed changes in governance have combined with a World Bank Global Environmental Facility (GEF) project to alter local patterns of natural resource management. In particular, in the process of decentralization, recent migrants who have settled permanently in the area have acquired significant government-sanctioned power, while traditional but transient resource users, such as transhumant pastoralists, have seen their influence over natural resource use governance wane.