Elizabeth E. Watson

Examining the Potential of Indigenous Institutions for Development: A Perspective from Borana, Ethiopia

This article examines an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development. It concentrates on indigenous natural resource management (NRM) institutions which have been seen by some development agencies to be a means to address the needs of people and the environment in a way that is also participatory. Using material from Borana, Ethiopia, the article describes the indigenous NRM institutions and examines the outcome of one attempt to work with them. In the process, it shows that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers. Through an examination of this approach to development, the article also examines the usefulness of recent broad approaches to institutions.

Water, Rules and Gender: Water Rights in an Indigenous Irrigation System, Marakwet, Kenya

The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received increasing attention both from social science researchers and from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes. This article discusses how water is allocated within one such irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet escarpment in Kenya. It describes the ‘formal rules’ of water rights, giving particular attention to the issue of gender with respect to water rights. It then discusses the ‘working rules’ relevant to water allocation, involving various informal practices of sharing, buying and stealing. The implications of this complexity for understanding the operation of indigenous farmer-managed irrigation systems are examined.

Using Discourses for Policy Evaluation: The Case of Marine Common Property Rights in Chile

ABSTRACT In an attempt to combine marine conservation and economic development, the Chilean government introduced a policy that gives formal property rights over defined areas of seabed to artisanal fishers. This study used discourse analysis to understand the impacts and consequences of this policy. Story lines based on sustainability, livelihood maintenance, and historical right claims are mechanisms by which three different groups of fishers adopted postures toward the policy and each other. These act as a means of legitimizing claims when adapting to conditions generated by the policy and also vindicate poaching between syndicates, thereby jeopardizing the whole system. Results show the fishing groups studied adopt the policy for different reasons than those espoused by government during its development. Discourse analysis assists the understanding of actors’ policy responses and provides an insightful tool to investigate incentives and dominance of particular sets of ideas in a comanagement framework.

Indigenous Irrigation, Agriculture and Development, Marakwet, Kenya

The existence of small-scale informal farmer-managed irrigation systems in sub-Saharan Africa is now widely recognized, and there is interest in the potential for development intervention to enhance their output. If such interventions are not to have adverse impacts, they need to be based on thorough research, but there are as yet few studies of the extent of these systems and the agriculture they sustain. This paper reviews knowledge of one such system, the hill-furrow irrigation system of the Marakwet Escarpment in Kenya, and presents new research on the nature, extent and significance of irrigation in the area. The paper discusses the construction and organization of the gravity irrigation system, the patterns of irrigated agriculture, and the extent of irrigation in the context of the wider irrigation sector in Kenya.

Local Community, Legitimacy, and Cultural Authenticity in Postconflict Natural Resource Management: Ethiopia and Mozambique

In this paper we explore the way in which ‘local community’ has been conceptualised in initiatives to promote natural resource management (NRM) in postconflict Ethiopia and Mozambique in the late 1990s. Both countries have seen a shift towards policy discourses that stress ‘participatory’ approaches to NRM, and a search for legitimate and authentic cultural institutions at a local level that can act as a vehicle for implementation of this new policy approach. Yet, engagement with a range of local institutions has often conflated terms such as ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’ with ‘local’, ‘community’, and ‘communal’, missing contestation over their social and cultural authenticity and making mistaken assumptions about the rootedness of institutions in geographical space. Examples of forest management initiatives in Manica Province, Mozambique, and land and water management in Borana, southern Ethiopia, are contrasted to consider the differences and similarities in the nature and outcomes of such external interventions.

A "hardening of lines": landscape, religion and identity in northern Kenya.

Abstract The paper examines the ways in which identities and identity politics between ethnic groups are linked to the way landscapes are constructed and experienced in northern Kenya. Using the cases of the Boran and the Gabra, the paper demonstrates that indigenous religious beliefs, practices and institutions have been central to the construction and experience of landscape and to the development of certain forms of identities and inter-ethnic relations. It explores the way in which, despite profound transformations brought by conversion to Islam and Christianity, the role of religion in structuring relations to landscape and identity remains. The paper draws on the theoretical approaches of Massey and Ingold which implicate social engagements with space in the construction of subjectivities and relations to others. It explores the extent to which Masseys idea of “open” and “closed” spatial systems can be applied usefully to the African context, and help to extend understandings of the development of peaceful or conflict-ridden inter-group relations. Through investigating the connections between religion, identity, landscape and space, the paper seeks to provide explanations for the growing salience of identity politics and inter-ethnic violence in northern Kenya.

Frontier transformations: development visions, spaces and processes in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT African approaches to development have shifted, particularly in north-eastern Africa. Donor-driven policies have given way to state-led development ‘visions’, often with a focus on large-scale infrastructure projects – feeding into and reflecting ‘Africa Rising’ discourses. In Kenya and Ethiopia, these visions include flagship projects in the geographical frontiers, areas previously viewed as buffer zones, whose people have been historically marginalised. This paper adapts the analytical framework from James Scott’s Seeing Like a State in order to compare Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s state visions, and to understand the risks to the populations intended to benefit from such visions from the unintended (but predictable) consequences such projects have had in the past.

Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya

In the drylands of Africa, pastoralists have been facing new challenges, including those related to environmental shocks and stresses. In northern Kenya, under conditions of reduced rainfall and more frequent droughts, one response has been for pastoralists to focus increasingly on camel herding. Camels have started to be kept at higher altitudes and by people who rarely kept camels before. The development has been understood as a climate change adaptation strategy and as a means to improve climate resilience. Since 2003, development organizations have started to further the trend by distributing camels in the region. Up to now, little has been known about the nature of, reasons for, or ramifications of the increased reliance on camels. The paper addresses these questions and concludes that camels improve resilience in this dryland region, but only under certain climate change scenarios, and only for some groups.

Mind the gap: disciplinary dissonance, gender and the environment

This article investigates the treatment of gender issues in “research for development” natural resources management (NRM) projects. Through discussion of an NRM research project in the United Kingdom and India, the article explores how the use of inaccurate gender stereotypes results in projects being compromised. The article seeks to explain why this happens despite widespread appreciation of the centrality of gender issues to NRM and poverty. In explanation the article identifies the significance of difficulties in the partnerships between the natural and social science dimensions of these projects. The study demonstrates that instead of easy and equal partnership, the relationship between natural and social science practitioners and practices remains characterized by inequality and poor communication, with serious consequences for the understanding of, and response to, gender issues.