Evaluating the effectiveness of community-based conservation in northern Kenya: A Report to The Nature Conservancy
University of Southampton
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Abstract: Poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation are some of the most serious challenges currently facing civil society. Increasingly,these issues have been seen as linked,both in international declarations such as the Millennium Development Goals and at the individual project level. However,there is little understanding about how it may be used to provide simultaneous benefits for communities and biodiversity in developing nations due to a lack of evidence. This study reports ecological and socioeconomic outcomes of a community-based conservation project in the arid rangelands of northern Kenya,which links biodiversity conservation with local livelihoods. The Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) provides technical support to 17 conservancies managed by the pastoralist communities. NRTâ??s impact was assessed in three conservancies,Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust,Sera Wildlife Conservancy and West Gate Community Conservancy. Conservancies were compared to non-conserved baselines with similar socioeconomic and environmental conditions,identified using maximum entropy modelling. In a sample of more than 600 households,NRT and its constituent conservancies were found to enhance livelihoods in participating communities,compared to baseline conditions. In Namunyak and West Gate,community conservation has led to significant positive change in livelihoods for communities engaged in the initiative. Benefits occur at both the household and community level and are typically not financial in nature. Increasing physical security and access to affordable transport were the most important impacts for households. Some direct financial impacts have occurred through the provision of educational and medical scholarships and to a lesser extent through paid employment. Incomes in conservancy communities were significantly more likely to be described as â??stable or increasingâ?? than in nonconservancy areas,and small-scale changes in the activities used to generate income are apparent. Three types of impacts were seen to occur as a result of NRT. The first were complementary to changes occurring across in the region,with community institutions taking over the role of development NGOs or local government. For example,West Gate Community Conservancy provides water to the community at Ngutuk Ongiron. The second were additional benefits,such the disbursement of bursaries to fund secondary and higher education which would not have occurred without conservancy establishment. Finally,conservancies acted to stabilise certain livelihoods components,such as access to firewood,buffering participating communities from resource shocks seen in other communities in the region. Remotely-sensed imagery was used to evaluate the ecological impact of community conservation initiatives in the region. A tasselled cap transformation was performed on both dry season and rainy season imagery,and the differences analysed. Green vegetation increased significantly between 2000 and 2007 in community conserved areas,when compared to baseline sites. From the pattern of change in pixel brightness and moisture suggests leaf litter has also significantly increased in NRT areas. Greater green and senescent vegetation cover is indicative improved habitat condition in community conserved areas. Grazing was an important determinant of vegetation change within the management zones of conservancies. Seasonally-grazed buffer zones experienced significantly higher increases in green vegetation during the dry season,than the â??no-takeâ?? core zones due to stimulatory effects of grazing and livestock presence on photosynthetic activity. 4 The establishment of conservancies in northern Kenya has led to positive outcomes for both communities and the environment in which they live. Conservation has enhanced livelihoods by facilitating community access to public services and infrastructure. These socioeconomic changes have occurred in the context of significant improvements to habitat condition driven by sustainable grazing management.