Summary

FAO’s decade-long work in the Greater Karamoja Cluster shows that interventions focusing on livestock mobility and natural resource management play an important role towards strengthening livelihoods, sustaining peace and preventing conflict. Sustainable cross-border sharing of natural resources and the coordination of animal movements (and the services associated with it) have been used effectively by FAO and its partners to prevent and mitigate conflicts.

Background and Objective

The Greater Karamoja Cluster (GKC) encompasses the Southwestern parts of Ethiopia, Northwestern Kenya, the Southeastern parts of South Sudan and Northeastern Uganda. Located at the periphery of these countries, far away from the capitals, the Cluster has some of the lowest social development indicators, least access to services, is poorly integrated with the national livestock marketing systems and is conspicuously absent from the vibrant livestock export market originating from the Horn of Africa. The cluster is also plagued by recurrent inter-communal conflicts over competition on natural resources and, at times, on ethnic grounds. Frequent and persistent drought is a recurrent feature of the cluster, which is becoming more pronounced and greatly exacerbated by climate change, advancing desertification and ecological degradation of the rangelands. This has a significant impact on pastoralist communities, leading to persistent food insecurity, outbreak of trans-boundary animal diseases (TADs) and eruption of resource-based conflicts within countries and across borders. This practice presents the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) experience in inter-community crossborder livestock and resource sharing over the last decade in the Karamoja cluster. In this area, crossborder resource sharing and livestock coordination has proven to be effective in achieving a situation in which communities peacefully share and sustainably manage their resources, thereby preventing the continuation, outbreak or recurrence of resource-based conflict. Cross-border pastoral resource sharing and livestock coordination sustains (and improves or rejuvenates) traditional pastoralist institutions, increases resilience of pastoral communities to disaster and drought, and is contingent upon recognition that communities have always governed land and natural resources – for mobility and for peace. This approach contributes to building the resilience of communities that have limited resources on their side and have been given the access to utilize the available resources by the other community while opening up the opportunities to access market and trade across the borders. At national and regional level, this practice provides opportunities for coordinated and harmonised investments in cross-border areas. Ultimately, this integrated approach contributes to peaceful co-existence, sharing and management of natural resources, thereby protecting key livelihoods assets of pastoralist communities.

Actions and Implementation

This practice builds on traditional institutional pastoral resource sharing mechanisms, where communities make (informal) agreements for the sake of peacefully sharing their resources in a mutually beneficial way. This bottom-up approach involves all the key stakeholders from communities to policy makers. FAO assists communities in further developing and formalizing these traditional agreements, and further supports crossborder initiatives to foster harmonised and coordinated interventions in regards to pasture and water for livestock, as well as control and prevention of transboundary animal diseases. Cross-border collaboration emphasises the need to coordinate and share livestock mobility information between communities by including external parties and different groups within a community using common resources. The process is implemented at three levels that can take place simultaneously: 1. community level, resource-sharing agreements were signed between the Pokot, Pian and Tepeth communities. 2. local and national government level, to enhance cross-border trade, foster peace and increase human and livestock mobility; and 3. regional level, through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), as the custodian for the Memorandum of Understanding on livestock mobility and livestock disease control. For successful implementation of cross-border pastoral resource sharing and livestock coordination, it is essential to undertake an initial territorial diagnosis, which includes the identification of traditional institutions, territorial stakeholders and power imbalances – including the roles and responsibilities of the local authorities on all sides of the borders. Although they are often overlooked, land issues play a key role. FAO promotes a people-centred, conflict-sensitive, negotiated approach rather than just a technical solution. It addresses access, use and management rights of land, while reducing asymmetries. Following this, the practice draws from several methodologies, including: • Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR): This participatory process brings people within the same community together to enable them to collectively address common disaster risks, and pursue common disaster risk reduction measures. It aims to target a group of people in a systematic way towards achieving a safe and resilient community. This is used to understand the nature of risks and hazards the community is exposed to, and taking that experience to develop sustainable programmatic solutions. • Participatory Natural Resource Management (PNRM): These are a set of approaches that put people and their relationships with their environment first and allow local populations to define adequate, sustainable ways of using the water, land and grazing resources available to them. • Livestock and Pastoral Field School (PFS): PFS are ‘schools without walls’ where capacity is developed from existing local knowledge. They are guided by the following key principles: i) Learning is by doing and is problem-based; ii) The herd and the landscape are the main learning grounds; iii) Discovery-based learning tools trigger a spirit of curiosity and innovativeness; and iv) Trained facilitators guide the learning process, not by teaching but by facilitating. • Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs): CAHWs are individuals who are trained to provide basic animal health services and give husbandry advice to livestock keepers. They are in charge of disseminating certain techniques and methods in order to optimize animal production and play an important role in epidemiological surveillance. Bringing stakeholders together: The community dialogue works through traditional institutions composed of influential elders and opinion leaders in the affected communities, including political leaders, and Government representatives. They deliberate on issues that affect livelihoods and at the same time come up with solutions to counter the problems. The Role of FAO is to coordinate and facilitate this dialogue from community, local, national and regional level. FAOs also brings in other stakeholders such as NGOs, Civil society organizations and private sector into this dialogue. FAO thereby facilitates a bottom up and well as a top-down approach to enable the dialogue between the communities – resulting in sustainable inter-community resource sharing. Facilitation and brokering: The importance of good and impartial, independent facilitation cannot be underestimated and the role of government, both local and national, is essential in the success of cross-border livestock coordination and resource sharing. The whole process can vary in time and can run up to 5 years. Externalities determine the speed: disarmament can speed things up, drought will slow it down, and pre-existing relationships can help in the initial phase, as it takes time to build trust. Ownership of the process by the key stakeholders is critical for success.

Outcomes and Impacts

If correctly implemented, the described approach results in coordinated and harmonised control of trade relations and transboundary animal diseases, synchronised livestock investment in the cross-border areas, peaceful co-existence through shared natural resources and increased resilience of pastoralist communities to shocks and stresses. Tangible impacts documented at the local include: • A joint drought response by the Turkana County Government and the Moroto and Kotido district local Governments involved the vaccination and mass treatment of livestock as well as vaccinations for children. See: https://bit.ly/2IMox8k • Increased (cross-border) trade in livestock, grains and other commodities – especially between Moroto, Nakiloro in Uganda and Lokiriama in Turkana County, Kenya –as communities take advantage of available opportunities in the neighboring countries, a result of better communication and mutual trust. • Developed community trust, good communication and collaboration improved security and grazing opportunities in areas previously insecure. • Because of the resource sharing agreements, livestock grazing and watering opportunities have increased leading to reduced vulnerability to drought (water and pasture access are the two key determinants of livestock survival during harsh times), thereby improving livestock conditions and trade – ultimately leading to increased levels of food security. • The practice has led to improved links between (local) government and communities, facilitating the integration of community plans into local government planning, ultimately leading to better disaster preparedness. • The recurrent tensions and violent conflicts in the cross-border areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda have weakened the resilience of community institutions and livelihood systems in many areas. The cross-border sharing of pastoral resources can contribute towards conflict prevention and mitigation. Indeed, the sharing of resources fosters the creation of platforms where communities can mediate disputes, conclude peace agreements and formulate joint grazing policies to avoid future conflicts. For example, work undertaken by FAO and IGAD allowed pastoralists from Turkana in Kenya to escape the 2017 drought and move into Uganda to access grazing lands without causing conflicts with the local Karamojong people. The Governments of South Sudan and Ethiopia both joined the agreement later.

Sustainability and Scalability

To ensure sustainability, FAO made sure to: • Use the strong participation of communities, local and national institutions and regional stakeholders, creating ownership and commitment; • Strengthen key providers of expertise and advice, thereby creating sustainability through existing platforms and governance structures; • Document and share knowledge, information and experiences generated during and beyond the project. The cross-border sharing of pastoral resources and coordination of livestock movements reinforces traditional pastoralist institutions and boosts the resilience of pastoral communities to disasters and droughts. It is based on the acknowledgment that local communities have always used mobility as an instrument to manage natural resources such as land and water. FAO works to anchor the practice of cross-border resource sharing into regional and national strategies and policies; it does so in close collaboration with IGAD and its specialized institutions, such as the IGAD Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism (CEWARN) and the IGAD Centre for Pastoral Area and Livestock Development (ICPALD). The upscaling of the original, bilateral MoU to a multilateral MoU is testimony to the success of this work. IGAD enjoys the support of its Member States, and has formidable political clout through high-level policy organs that work to tackle complex regional issues. Initiatives to promote the practice of cross-border resource sharing therefore benefit greatly from collaboration with IGAD (in addition to that with local and national governments) and from the strengthening of IGAD’s capacities. This practice has ample potential for upscaling and/or replicating. The most important condition for scaling and replicating is political: reaching successful cross-border animal health coordination and resource sharing agreements requires long-term commitment. National, regional and local stakeholders need to: • Sensitize and share lessons learnt from successful cases with other border communities, local authorities and political leadership; • Provide and train human resources to ensure adequate facilitation; • Providing sufficient financial resources; • Implement relevant legislation underpinning community governance of land and natural resources; • Improve cross-sectoral communication, collaboration structures, capacity and a methodology to enable pastoral resource sharing along national and also sub-national administrative and/or ethnic boundaries. With regards to cross border coordination, policies and investment, this project has resulted in: • Coordinated and harmonized cross border animal response, including the scaling up and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between several governments in the region to cover cross border areas of Ethiopia-Somalia, Ethiopia-Kenya, Ethiopia-Sudan, Ethiopia–Djibouti, and South Sudan-Sudan. For example, see: https://tinyurl.com/y58fxugv • Cluster coordination: The same MoU provided the basis for IGAD’s consideration in setting up the first cluster coordination office in Karamoja to coordinate all the cross border interventions in the area. The joint cross border coordination committee are in place meeting regularly to discuss and harmonize activities across the borders. See: https://bit.ly/2WLXZZH • Expanding national action to regional benefit: Using the Kenya Uganda MoU model, a number of cross border and regional meetings on animal health and resources sharing have been held to discuss disease control – specifically for the Ethiopia-Kenya, Tanzania and Kenya cross-border areas.

Gender and Social Inclusivity

Empowering women as members of resource-sharing committees allows them to advocate that grazing areas close to settlements be reserved for milking herds, to reduce pastoralist women’s workloads.

Innovative Initiative

This practice builds on previous initiatives and collaborations by a range of stakeholders as well as community initiatives. FAO took this collaboration a step further and drew support from IGAD and national governments to leverage its technical and policy support, strengthening the cross-border collaboration among veterinary officers in Kenya and Uganda. In turn, this brought in the national governments for approval of cross-border actions; including policy makers from Ministries, African Union (AU-IBAR) and the East Africa Community. The coordination work by FAO and IGAD resulted in the facilitation and drafting of the very first Memorandum of Understanding on cross-border animal health collaboration in IGAD region, which remains a model for other cross border activities in the region. The MoU pillars are enshrined on the provisions of the East African Community treaty and the IGAD agreement and operationalizes the livestock policies of AU-IBAR, IGAD, EAC, and each country’s national policy framework. If selected, FAO will be telling an immersive and interactive story using a professionally made VR film following beneficiaries on the ground in a challenging and difficult-to-reach area. This video will also be showcased at the Dubai 2020 World Expo, as one of the winners of the Global Best Practice Programme.

Resources devoted to delivery

Implementation of this practice started in 2007 as part of larger programmes aiming at the sustainable development of the Greater Karamoja Cluster, with resources from the European Union (EU) and the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC). Next to FAO and IGAD, it involved technical partners such as the African Union (AU) and national and International NGOs including: ACTED, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières International (VSF), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Conclusion

For decades, the Greater Karamoja Cluster’s deadly matrix of cattle raids and revenge attacks hampered the region’s economic and social well-being. Historically, communities living in the Greater Karamoja Cluster coordinated information about animal disease outbreak, pasture grazing routes and water sources. People depended on other districts to access grazing grounds, and movement across boundaries became a requisite for survival. These symbiotic relations between neighboring groups helped pastoralists eke out livings across the frequently harsh terrain, which alternates from semi-arid desert to thickly forested hills. However, the constant outbreak of violence not only severed these traditional knowledge networks, it also curtailed the frequent and unfettered movement upon which pastoralist lives and livelihoods depend. This also had unfortunate repercussions for animal health. As the ever-present threat of raids kept herds and their flocks corralled into divided territories, livestock disease spread from overcrowded conditions. In helping to create new pathways of communication and interaction between neighboring groups, the decade-long, FAO-supported interventions revitalized traditional networks of knowledge and resource sharing. The sharing and coordinated use of natural resources promotes the peaceful co-existence of pastoral communities by protecting their key livelihoods assets and boosting their resilience. FAO strongly believes that the modest costs involved in bringing together communities across borders to discuss the management of resources and resolve potential conflicts are more than offset by the benefits: improved resilience and strengthened livelihoods, better natural resource management, more trade and peace.