Module 11 - Kenya: Community-Based Drought Management

The pastoralist population in arid districts of Kenya is counted amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of society. The arid lands are well endowed with livestock resources but lack reliable marketing outlets to provide the full benefit of this resource for either pastoralists or consumers in the region. Environmental constraints in these districts are extreme: fragile, easily degraded physical environments and poor and variable water resources. Drought is a normal and recurring phenomenon that can kill 50 percent or more of the livestock in severe cases. Experience with typical top-down development projects for traditional nomadic pastoralist communities has been so bad that many donors still shy away from financing further development interventions. Unless constraints imposed by drought risks are addressed, however, neither effective conservation of natural resources nor development of the potential of these areas will be realized.

Project Objectives and Description

The overall objective of the first Arid Lands Resource Management Project is to build the capacity of communities in the arid districts of Kenya to cope better with drought. To achieve this objective, the project focuses on three components:

• Drought management institutionalizes at national and district levels a structure to effectively manage all the phases of drought. This includes preparedness (drought monitoring), mitigation (drought contingency planning and rapid reaction), and recovery (continued drought relief activities).
  
  
• Marketing and infrastructure addresses the bottlenecks that impede livestock market linkages between the arid lands and the rest of the national economy.
  
  
• Community development is designed to achieve the fundamental objective of increasing communities’ capacities to protect and develop their livelihoods by dealing with drought cycles in an effective way. Delivery systems related to services demanded by communities include animal health and livestock production, crop production, water supply and human health, and education.

Benefits and Impacts

A key achievement of the project has been its role in the coordination of assistance to the arid lands and the overall national coordination of donors, in particular through the establishment of the Kenya Food Security Meeting. Adequate and timely information provided by the project has enabled proper scheduling of drought mitigation assistance. The project has also been highly successful in developing a devolved system of implementation with full participation, involvement, and ownership by district governments, institutions, and communities.