Pastoralism and Changes in Pastoral Livelihoods

This chapter provides a general overview of pastoralism and its key features. It critically touches upon a range of relevant topics, starting from some drawn major categories of global pastoral typologies to the technical issues of the somewhat peculiar nature of pastoralists’ production behaviour in their harsh environmental habitats of high risks and uncertainties, with a view to introduce the subject to a broad audience, The peripheral pastoralist peoples, with peculiar livelihood strategies, typically manage a special type of asset (livestock) in their uniquely organized system of dryland management in a distinct production system of human, animal, and rangelands ecological interactions. The chapter discusses how livelihood strategies are changing amid recent dynamic trends in the economy, socio-politics, and the natural environment, and explains the driving factors behind shifts in pastoral livelihoods. Moreover, it is shown that the factors that influence pastoralist microeconomic behaviour are generally different from those that shape sedentary farmers' behaviour. This idiosyncrasy of pastoralism is briefly illustrated by referring to variables included in the pastoral production and utility functions. It then critically underlined that the lack of full understanding of the underlying pastoralists’ response behaviour by rangeland development planners in East Africa has often remained a serious gap in policy analysis and planning. The chapter also takes up the often under-researched gender dimension of pastoralism. It briefly proposes three broad categories of issues that require critical attention in this respect.