Restoration of degraded communal grazing lands is an effective strategy for improving livelihoods, incomes, and nutrition in pastoral, agro-pastoral, and mixed farming systems of East Africa and other regions with significant poverty, malnutrition, and vulnerability to droughts and other shocks. Reversing degradation in communal grazing lands is challenging, yet can be accomplished by enhancing the organization of grazing management, drawing upon local ecological knowledge of livestock keepers, action research to test the effectiveness and feasibility of restoration techniques, and ecological modeling to inform policy and planning by local communities and regional and local governments. Social and ecological context-dependency of communal grazing management frustrates the formulation of recommendations on a purely theoretical basis. In the past, however, the scientific and larger ‘expert’ communities have often not valued local knowledge on grazing management in a manner commensurate with its worth. In collaboration with our partners from communities and governmental and non- governmental organizations, International Livestock Research Institute researchers have recently implemented two research projects with the general goal of restoring grazing lands while increasing livestock production. Methodologies range from empirical action research with our partners, to collaborative modeling of landscapes.
Results/Conclusions
In these research projects, local knowledge of livestock keepers has played a critical role in identifying research questions, designing action research trials, and structuring and parameterizing simulation models. Approaches and processes developed for conducting action research, and lessons from these projects demonstrate how the fusion of scientific knowledge and local ecological knowledge can lead to new discoveries and sharing of lessons among landscapes and across disparate groups of stakeholders. Integrating local with scientific knowledge better fits research to the local context, results in realistic management recommendations more likely to succeed in challenging contexts, and perhaps most importantly, strengthens the ability of institutions to take decisive action to restore degraded land.