Sedentarisation of Pastoralists:
Policy Pressures and Policy Options

Sedentarisation of nomadic and transhumant pastoralists can take place for a number of overlapping reasons:

- Explicit government policy to settle pastoralists because mobile pastoralism per se is perceived as "primitive" or as a problem (for the environment, service delivery, taxation, law and order and national security). In some cases this has involved settlement of pastoralists on new irrigated schemes. Such explicit policies are now rarer than they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Inappropriate land tenure policies and insecurity that inhibit mobility
- Pastoralists voluntarily settling to get easier access to government services, wage employment
- Destitute pastoralists settling quasi-voluntarily to get access to relief food (often on a long term basis), food-for-work etc.
- Pastoralists settling in sub-humid areas made available for year round settlement by the control of human or animal diseases
- Pastoralists settling pre-emptively in areas where available land is rapidly being claimed.

The first policy responses should be to:

- discontinue any policies which are designed solely to end pastoralist mobility: under a range of environmental and institutional conditions, mobility is a rational strategy that maximises welfare and minimises negative impacts on the environment
- explore alternatives for human service delivery to mobile pastoralists
- and strengthen pastoralism as a productive system in a number of ways:

- strengthening local natural resource management
- promoting conflict resolution mechanisms
- curtailing direct control of stocking rates
- introducing well-designed grazing fee regimes
- drought management policies
- zoning of rangelands

Beyond these policies, it is important to analyse, preferably using PRA among other methodologies, the specific processes behind any local example of sedentarisation, determine immediate needs of sedentarising pastoralists and other stakeholders and address those needs alongside environmental sustainability.

Many of the general policies that relate to crop-livestock integration are likely to be relevant.

Policies that specifically relate to sedentarising pastoralists may include:

- Careful planning of water point provision
- Strengthening of pastoral associations at regional and national level
- Land tenure policies relating to sedentarisation.

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