Browsing by Author "Fratkin, Elliot"

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Sustainability and Pastoral Livelihoods: Lessons from East African Maasai and Mongolia
(2003) Fratkin, Elliot; Mearns, Robin
"'Sustainable development' currently has a firm grip on the lexicon of development agencies from the World Bank to small nongovernmental organizations, but it offers little practical guidance for tackling diverse problems in specific places. The concept is of particular importance to pastoral populations throughout the world-those people dependent on livestock raising in and or semiarid lands whose survival depends on their ability physically and politically to maintain access to their pastures. This paper compares two pastoralist populations-East African Maasai and pastoralists of Mongolia-to discuss recent changes in the pastoral way of life and to describe what sustainability has meant in the past and what sustainability needs to mean in the future for pastoralist populations."
Threats to the Pastoral Commons: Land Grabbing, Agribusiness, and Hydroelectric Dams in Ethiopia
(2013) Fratkin, Elliot
"The Federal Government of Ethiopia has dramatically accelerated programs of displacement and resettlement of pastoral and semi-pastoral societies in different regions of the country. These populations make up only 12% of Ethiopia's population yet produce the majority of the country's livestock, the largest number in Africa. Although pastoral production requires mobility for access to grazing and water, the Federal government dismisses these practices as 'primitive' and inefficient. The Ethiopia government has focused economic development on hydro-power and large scale irrigation farming projects for rice, wheat, sugar, and cotton, much of it along rivers in under-populated pastoralist regions. The government's goals include 'modernizing' their pastoral populations by providing social services through resettlement and alternate economies of wage labor and farming. These policies have not been successful and have engendered resistance from the affected pastoralists. Drawing on examples from the Omo River, Awash River, and Borena Plateau, this paper makes recommendations to maintain pastoral livelihoods by preserving common lands while improving social services."