Uganda’s rangeland policy: intentions,consequences and opportunities.

Abstract

This paper analyses Uganda’s rangeland policies and their ecological and socio-economic consequences, beginningin pre-colonial times. The paper interrogates what informed these policies, their objectives and outcomes that havebeen realized. Policy actions are recommended to correct the deficiencies identified in the analysis. This analysisshows that policies were based on western European resource management, classical rangeland ecological andeconomic theory and marginalization narratives, rather than the socio-ecological realities of Uganda’s rangelands.The unique attributes of Uganda’s rangelands were largely unrecognized. Consequently, pastoralists, dependent onthe rangeland resources and ecosystem services, were displaced and exposed to incremental risks, poverty and abreakdown of social networks and safety nets as well as decline in rangeland productivity. In the rangelands ofnorth-eastern Uganda for example, the inflexibility and immobility and forms of exploitation dictated to theKarimojong pastoralists led to increased soil erosion and decline in land productivity. Similarly, with increasedparcelization, individualization and sedentarization in central and south-western Uganda, pastoral communitiesbecame impoverished as rangeland resources became increasingly limited. This increased their exposure to thevagaries of extreme events such as droughts, floods and disease outbreaks, thereby increasing livestock mortalityand recurrent food insecurity. Expansion of competing land uses has reduced the net availability of rangelandresources, often with the support of external incentives. Current policies promoting fire exclusion have led toincreased bush encroachment, while other policies have undermined the centrality of commons’governancepractices and institutions. Uganda’s land use policies ought to emphasize a more balanced socio-ecologicalperspective (ensuring net gain especially in the interaction of resource use between humans and the environment)that supports the functionality and productivity of rangeland ecosystems and their ability to deliver socio-economically important ecosystem services and address human needs. This can be through promotion of commonproperty and consolidation of land for optimal utilization of ecological heterogeneity and enhancement ofresilience. Mapping of transhumance corridors to determine ways through which mobility can increase herds’access to forage and water between and within years will be equally important to enhance pastoralists’resilience.Policy actions that provide payments for conservation stewardship of rangelands should be considered toincentivize land owners to maintain their land as rangelands. Assessment is required of the ecological and socialimpacts of fire, in order to determine optimal fire regimes and amendment of laws that ban the use of fires, so asto promote prescribed burning in rangelands. Achieving all these will require reforms that clearly delineate policyand legal frameworks for sustainable rangeland use and management.