Pastoralist Resource Use and Access in Somalia: A Changing Context of Development, Environmental Stress and Conflict

Abstract

The paper examines Somalia pastoralists resource use in the context of changing resource access rights. These rights are influenced by, and in turn affect development activities, ecological stress, and conflict. A brief description of pastoral systems and important pastoralist-related development efforts prior to the collapse of the Somali state, is followed by a focus on the interplay between development, Somalia segmentary social order, and conditions of environmental stress and conflict. This interplay produced the circumstances within which most, if not all, pastoralists found themselves in the late 1980s, replaced by widespread insecurity as the dominant context for resource use options in the early 1990s. As Somalia emerges from these conditions, rangeland livestock production will be essential to feed a growing population from a land resource where pastoralism may be the only sustainable use and one of the few assets possessed and easily exploited by a large agrarian economy.