The Challenges of Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Pastoral Rangelands

Recognizing that community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approaches have had mixed success in pastoral rangelands, this paper compares five case studies—two from Kenya, two Ethiopia and one Tunisia—to identify aspects of social-ecological context affect the implementation CBNRM settings. Data for each was collected following a common protocol. Among characteristics emerged our study as important were socio-political biophysical wider landscape within which community’s rangeland territory is located extent to circumscribed by some combination other land uses tenure types, major political boundaries, physical features. The analysis these cases suggests where pastoralist communities coexist large, open landscapes, rather than narrowly approach, interventions need be explicitly multi-level horizontally flexible.