Improving Civic Intelligence for Rangeland Rehabilitation

Improving Civic Intelligence for Rangeland Rehabilitation is a project designed to explore and evaluate the potential of individual ideas and activities within a specific context to strengthen the civic intelligence of the community and work towards restoring the health of the land.

Based in Samburu East, Kenya, it will work through and build on the structure of community-based 'conservancies'. The resident community consists of Samburu pastoralists, the majority of whom depend entirely on their livestock. As pastoralists, their major problems are, broadly speaking, parallel to the problems faced by the conservancy. While the conservancy places an emphasis on wildlife, the community depends on their livestock. Both entities are thus challenged more than anything by the worsening environmental degradation. It is the aim of the Conservancy to introduce ‘holistic management’ practices in the grazing of community livestock, as this is possibly the greatest ‘tool’ available to combat degradation and attempt to rehabilitate the land. This involves a mass mobilization and recognition of the common goal and thereafter the best means available to achieve this.