Theme 7-1: Capacity, Institutions and Innovations for Sustainable Development--Oral Sessions
Description
Pastoralist rangeland systems often provide prime examples of scale mismatch—the challenge that arises when the scale and geographic extent of decision-making institutions do not correspond to the scale and geographic extent of problems that need to be addressed. Pastoralist resource use and traditional governance systems operate at multiple levels, and are often characterized by multiple, overlapping claims, rights, and management territories. Scholarship on pastoralist systems suggests that their fuzziness, flexibility, and overlap in territories and rights mean that there is no single scale or level that is optimal for effective resource governance. These characteristics stymie attempts to implement conventional land governance systems in pastoralist areas. Land use planning represents an approach to land governance with the potential to address some of the challenges of pastoral systems, but only if the challenge of scale can be addressed. Land use planning is a process that has to be applied over a set of particular—usually clearly-defined—spaces: planning units and regions. An essential step in the land use planning process is interpreting the site to delimit the planning area and determine the appropriate planning units. This paper considers the question of how to apply the concept of a planning region in land use planning in pastoral settings. Land use planning interventions that make use of simplistic delineations of planning units and planning regions run the risk of fragmenting pastoral systems and compounding scale mismatch. The paper describes how frameworks for land use planning in pastoral areas now being rolled out in three different countries in East Africa address this problem. Among the strategies adopted are explicitly planning at multiple levels with cross-level linkages, and planning with multiple, overlapping kinds of planning units.
Citation
Musoga, H. and Robinson, L. W., "Revisiting the Concept of the Planning Region in Settings with Dynamic Spatial-Temporal Conditions: Lessons from Land Use Planning in Pastoral Areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania" (2021). IGC Proceedings (1993-2023). 18.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/24/7/18
Included in
Revisiting the Concept of the Planning Region in Settings with Dynamic Spatial-Temporal Conditions: Lessons from Land Use Planning in Pastoral Areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania
Pastoralist rangeland systems often provide prime examples of scale mismatch—the challenge that arises when the scale and geographic extent of decision-making institutions do not correspond to the scale and geographic extent of problems that need to be addressed. Pastoralist resource use and traditional governance systems operate at multiple levels, and are often characterized by multiple, overlapping claims, rights, and management territories. Scholarship on pastoralist systems suggests that their fuzziness, flexibility, and overlap in territories and rights mean that there is no single scale or level that is optimal for effective resource governance. These characteristics stymie attempts to implement conventional land governance systems in pastoralist areas. Land use planning represents an approach to land governance with the potential to address some of the challenges of pastoral systems, but only if the challenge of scale can be addressed. Land use planning is a process that has to be applied over a set of particular—usually clearly-defined—spaces: planning units and regions. An essential step in the land use planning process is interpreting the site to delimit the planning area and determine the appropriate planning units. This paper considers the question of how to apply the concept of a planning region in land use planning in pastoral settings. Land use planning interventions that make use of simplistic delineations of planning units and planning regions run the risk of fragmenting pastoral systems and compounding scale mismatch. The paper describes how frameworks for land use planning in pastoral areas now being rolled out in three different countries in East Africa address this problem. Among the strategies adopted are explicitly planning at multiple levels with cross-level linkages, and planning with multiple, overlapping kinds of planning units.
