Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Coping with Natural Hazards in a Conservation Context: Resource-Use Decisions of Maasai Households During Recent and Historical Droughts

  • Published:
Human Ecology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Analyzing people’s decisions can reveal key variables that affect their behaviors. Despite the demonstrated utility of this approach, it has not been applied to livelihood decisions in the context of conservation initiatives. We used ethnographic decision modeling in combination with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to examine the herding decisions of Maasai households living near Tarangire National Park (TNP) during recent and historical droughts. The effects of the establishment of TNP on herding practices during drought were different than anticipated based on the size and reliability of several prominent resource areas that are now within the park. We found little evidence of people relying on these swamps and rivers for watering cattle during historical droughts; rather, these sites were more commonly used as grazing areas for small stock and wet-season grazing areas for cattle to avoid disease carried by calving wildebeest. Yet during the 2009 drought, many herders moved their livestock – especially cattle from outside of the study area – toward TNP in search of grazing. Our analysis of herding decisions demonstrates that resource-use decisions are complex and incorporate a variety of information beyond the size or reliability of a given resource area, including contextual factors (e.g., disease, conflict, grazing) and household factors (e.g., social capital, labor, herd size). More broadly, this research illustrates that pairing decision modeling with QCA is a structured approach to identifying these factors and understanding how opportunities, constraints, and perceptions influence how people respond to changes in resource access.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We use the term “rivers” loosely to refer to rivers, streams, and korongos (i.e., seasonal waterways). The vast majority of drainages in the study area were intermittent or ephemeral.

  2. Clans are patrilineal groups which constrain marriage opportunities and access to hand-dug wells, and provide geographically dispersed social support networks (Homewood and Rodgers 1991; Spear and Waller 1993).

  3. We use the term ‘available’ to refer to water sources that are not privately held or are otherwise inaccessible (e.g., inside a national park) and are producing water (as opposed to broken boreholes or dry dams).

  4. “Red bone marrow disease” afflicts livestock during particularly severe droughts and refers to the unusual look of the bone marrow of an animal that has died from lack of food and water, rather than an infectious disease.

  5. There were several contradictory cases (i.e., cases that had different outcomes – some people used free sources and some used pay sources – for the same combination of factors), but only because some boreholes were free and some were not during historical droughts. All of these respondents were using boreholes.

  6. The two respondents that reported issues with cultivation were referring to the relatively recent 1993/94 drought.

References

  • Baird, T. D. (2014). Conservation and Unscripted Development: Proximity to Park Associated With Development and Financial Diversity. Ecology and Society 19(1): 4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baird, T. D., and Leslie, P. W. (2013). Conservation as Disturbance: Upheaval and Livelihood Diversification Near Tarangire National Park, Northern Tanzania. Global Environmental Change 23: 1131–1141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baird, T. D., Leslie, P. W., and McCabe, J. T. (2009). The Effect of Wildlife Conservation on Local Perceptions of Risk and Behavioral Response. Human Ecology 37: 463–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, C. B., Reardon, T., and Webb, P. (2001). Nonfarm Income Diversification and Household Livelihood Strategies in Rural Africa: Concepts, Dynamics, and Policy Implications. Food Policy 26: 315–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beck, K. A. (2005). Ethnographic Decision Tree Modeling: A Research Method for Counseling Psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology 52: 243–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernard, H. R. (2002). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birch-Thomsen, T., Frederiksen, P., and Sano, H. O. (2001). A Livelihood Perspective on Natural Resource Management and Environmental Change in Semiarid Tanzania. Economic Geography 77: 41–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryceson, D. F. (2002). The Scramble in Africa: Reorienting Rural Livelihoods. World Development 30: 725–739.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butt, B., Shortridge, A., and WinklerPrins, A. (2009). Pastoral Herd Management, Drought Coping Strategies, and Cattle Mobility in Southern Kenya. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99: 309–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, D. J., Gichohi, H., Mwangi, A., and Chege, L. (2000). Land use Conflict in Kajiado District, Kenya. Land Use Policy 17: 337–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, R., and Conway, G. R. (1992). Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century, IDS Discussion Paper 296. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coughenour, M. B., Ellis, J. E., Swift, D. M., Coppock, D. L., Galvin, K., McCabe, J. T., and Hart, T. C. (1985). Energy Extraction and Use in a Nomadic Pastoral Ecosystem. Science 230: 619–625.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, G., and Hjort, A. (1976). Having Herds: Pastoral Herd Growth and Household Economy. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology. University of Stockholm, Department of Social Anthropology.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Haan, A. (1999). Livelihoods and Poverty: The Role of Migration - a Critical Review of the Migration Literature. Journal of Development Studies 36: 1–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Sherbinin, A., VanWey, L. K., McSweeney, K., Aggarwal, R., Barbieri, A., Henry, S., Hunter, L. M., Twine, W., and Walker, R. (2008). Rural Household Demographics, Livelihoods and the Environment. Global Environmental Change 18: 38–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dyson-Hudson, R., and Dyson-Hudson, N. (1980). Nomadic Pastoralism. Annual Review of Anthropology 9: 15–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, F. (1998). Household Strategies and Rural Livelihood Diversification. Journal of Development Studies 35: 1–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, J. E., and Swift, D. M. (1988). Stability of African Pastoral Ecosystems - Alternate Paradigms and Implications for Development. Journal of Range Management 41: 450–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fratkin, E. (2001). East African Pastoralism in Transition: Maasai, Boran, and Rendille Cases. African Studies Review 44: 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galaty, J. G. (1993). ‘The eye that wants a person, where can it not see?’: inclusion, exclusion, and boundary shifters in Maasai identity. In Spear, T., and Waller, R. (eds.), Being Maasai. Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 174–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galvin, K. A., Thornton, P. K., Boone, R. B., and Sunderland, J. (2004). Climate Variability and Impacts on East African Livestock Herders: the Maasai of Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. African Journal of Range & Forage Science 21: 183–189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gichohi, H., Gakahu, C., and Mwangi, E. (1996). Savanna ecosystems. In McClanahan, T. R., and Young, T. P. (eds.), East African Ecosystems and Their Conservation. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 273–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladwin, C. H. (1976). A View of the Plan Puebla: An Application of Hierarchical Decision Models. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 58: 881–887.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gladwin, C. H. (1989). Ethnographic Decision Tree Modeling. Sage Publications, Newbury Park.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladwin, C. H. (1992). Gendered Impacts of Fertilizer Subsidy Removal Programs in Malawi and Cameroon. Agricultural Economics 7: 141–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, M. (2003). Partitioned Nature, Privileged Knowledge: Community-Based Conservation in Tanzania. Development and Change 34: 833–862.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, M. (2006). Sharing Pastures, Building Dialogues: Maasai and Wildlife Conservation in Northern Tanzania (Dissertation). University of Wisconsin, Madison.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, M. (2011). Strangers in Their Own Land: Maasai and Wildlife Conservation in Northern Tanzania. Conservation and Society 9: 65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, M. J., and Riosmena, F. (2013). Adaptive capacity in Tanzanian Maasailand: Changing Strategies to Cope with Drought in Fragmented Landscapes. Global Environmental Change 23: 588–597.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgson, D. L. (2001). Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Homewood, K. (2008). Ecology of African Pastoralist Societies. Ohio University Press, Athens.

    Google Scholar 

  • Homewood, K., Kristjanson, P., and Chenevix, T. P. (eds.) (2009). Staying Maasai? Livelihoods, Conservation and Development in East African Rangelands. Springer, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Homewood, K. M., and Rodgers, W. A. (1991). Maasailand Ecology: Pastoralist Development and Wildlife Conservation in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. Cambridge University Press, New York.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Igoe, J. (2002). National parks and human ecosystems: the challenge to community conservation, a case study from simanjiro Tanzania. In Chatty, D., and Colchester, M. (eds.), Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples. Berghahn Books, New York, pp. 77–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Igoe, J. (2004). Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota. Thomson/Wadsworth, Belmon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Igoe, J., and Brockington, D. (1999). Pastoral Land Tenure and Community Conservation: A Case Study from North-East Tanzania. International Institute for Environment and Development, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, J., and Williams, M. L. (1993). A Preliminary Ethnographic Decision Tree Model of Injection Drug Users’ (IDUs) Needle Sharing. Substance Use & Misuse 28: 997–1014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koponen, J. (1988). People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania: History and Structures. Monographs of the Finnish Society for Development Studies, Finnish Society of Development Studies.

  • Little, P. D., Smith, K., Cellarius, B. A., Coppock, D. L., and Barrett, C. B. (2001). Avoiding Disaster: Diversification and Risk Management Among East African Herders. Development and Change 32: 401–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masanjala, W. (2007). The Poverty-HIV/AIDS Nexus in Africa: A Livelihood Approach. Social Science & Medicine 64: 1032–1041.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, J. T. (2003). Sustainability and Livelihood Diversification Among the Maasai of Northern Tanzania. Human Organization 62: 100–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, J. T. (2004). Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, J. T., Leslie, P. W., and DeLuca, L. (2010). Adopting Cultivation to Remain Pastoralists: The Diversification of Maasai Livelihoods in Northern Tanzania. Human Ecology 38: 321–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, B. W., Breckheimer, I., McCleary, A., Guzmán-Ramirez, L., Caplow, S., Jones-Smith, J., and Walsh, S. (2010). Using Stylized Agent-Based Models for Population–Environment Research: A Case Study from the Galápagos Islands. Population & Environment 31: 401–426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, B. W., Caplow, S. C., and Leslie, P. W. (2012). Feedbacks Between Conservation and Social-Ecological Systems. Conservation Biology 26: 218–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, B. W., and Doyle, M. W. (2014). Rangeland Management and Fluvial Geomorphology in Northern Tanzania. Geomorphology 214: 366–377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ndagala, D. (1982). Operation “Impamati”: the Sedentarization of the Pastoral Maasai in Tanzania. Nomadic Peoples 10: 28–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ndagala, D. K. (1992). Territory, pastoralists, and livestock: resource control among the Kisongo Maasai. Dissertation, Uppsala University.

  • Normile, D. (2008). Driven to Extinction. Science 319: 1606–1609.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Malley, M. E. (2000). Cattle and Cultivation: Changing Land Use and Labor Patterns in Pastoral Maasai Livelihoods, Loliondo Division, Ngorongoro District, Tanzania. Dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.

  • Pedersen, J., and Benjaminsen, T. A. (2008). One Leg or Two? Food Security and Pastoralism in the Northern Sahel. Human Ecology 36: 43–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prins, H. H. T., and Loth, P. E. (1988). Rainfall Patterns as Background to Plant Phenology in Northern Tanzania. Journal of Biogeography 15: 451–463.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ragin, C. C. (2006). Set Relations in Social Research: Evaluating Their Consistency and Coverage. Political Analysis 14: 291–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Redpath, S. M., Arroyo, B. E., Leckie, F. M., Bacon, P., Bayfield, N., Gutiérrez, R. J., and Thirgood, S. J. (2004). Using Decision Modeling with Stakeholders to Reduce Human–Wildlife Conflict: A Raptor-Grouse Case Study. Conservation Biology 18: 350–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rihoux, B., and Ragin, C. (eds.) (2009). Configurational Comparative Methods: Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Related Techniques. Sage Publications Inc., Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robbins, P. (2004). Political Ecology. Blackwell Publishing, Malden.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, G., and Martínez, H. (1996). Can We Predict What Mothers Do? Modeling Childhood Diarrhea in Rural Mexico. Human Organization 55: 47–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, G. W., and Bernard, H. R. (2006). Testing an Ethnographic Decision Tree Model on a National Sample: Recycling Beverage Cans. Human Organization 65: 103–114.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sachedina, H. (2006). Conservation, Land Rights and Livelihoods in the Tarangire Ecosystem of Tanzania. Pastoralism and Poverty Reduction in East Africa: A Policy Research Conference. Nairobi, Kenya.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. M. (2012). Maasai and the Tanzanite Trade: New Facets of Livelihood Diversification in Northern Tanzania. Dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.

  • Spear, T., and Waller, R. (eds.) (1993). Being Maasai. Ohio University Press, Athens.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sutton, J. E. G. (1993). Becoming Maasailand. In Spear, T., and Waller, R. (eds.), Being Maasai. Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 38–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, M., and Homewood, K. (2002). Entrepreneurs, Elites, and Exclusion in Maasailand: Trends in Wildlife Conservation and Pastoralist Development. Human Ecology 30: 107–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waller, R. (1988). Emutai: Crisis and Response in Maasailand 1883-I902. In Johnson, D., and Anderson, D. (eds.), The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies from Northeast African History. Westview Press, Boulder, pp. 73–114.

    Google Scholar 

  • Western, D., and Manzolillo-Nightingale, D. L. (2004). Environmental Change and the Vulnerability of Pastoralists to Drought: A Case Study of the Maasai in Amboseli, Kenya. Africa Environment Outlook Case Studies: Human Vulnerability to Environmental Change, UNEP. Nairobi, Kenya, pp. 35–50.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Data collection was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (BCS-1030847), National Science Foundation grants BCS-0624265 and BCS-0624343, and funding from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Center for Global Initiatives. BWM is also grateful to the Carolina Population Center for training support (T32 HD007168) and for general support (5 R24 HD050924) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We would like to thank Gabriel Ole Saitoti and Isaya Rumas for their assistance in collecting data. This manuscript benefitted from the insights of Colin West, Pamela Jagger, Aaron Moody, Martin Doyle, and three anonymous reviewers.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and North Central Climate Science Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Brian W. Miller

  2. Department of Anthropology and Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Paul W. Leslie

  3. Department of Anthropology and Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    J. Terrence McCabe

Authors
  1. Brian W. Miller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Paul W. Leslie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. J. Terrence McCabe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brian W. Miller.

Appendix I

Appendix I

Hydrologic event calendar; D=drought, Dis=disease outbreaks, W=water development, R=rainfall, and H=other hydrologic events; *Olengesher is a meat eating ceremony that signifies the transition of an ageset from senior warriors to elder

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Miller, B.W., Leslie, P.W. & McCabe, J.T. Coping with Natural Hazards in a Conservation Context: Resource-Use Decisions of Maasai Households During Recent and Historical Droughts. Hum Ecol 42, 753–768 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9683-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9683-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation