Garba Tula Governance Assessment Final Report ... - Land Portal

1. Introduction
Garba Tula Governance Baseline Assessment, April 2011
This report is a contribution to IUCN’s project “Improving Natural Resource Governance for Rural Poverty
Reduction”, an international initiative that aims to support better environmental governance, including
fair and equitable access to natural resources, a better distribution of benefits, and a more participatory
and transparent decision-making processes. This five-year project is funded by the UK Department for
International Development’s (DFID) Governance and Transparency Fund, and is being coordinated by
IUCN’s Social Policy Unit with a portfolio of 10-sub projects focused in 13 countries in Africa, Asia, South
America and the Middle East. Each of these project sub-components is implemented through an IUCN
Regional and Country Office. The IUCN Eastern and Southern African Regional Programme Office
(ESARO), through its Drylands Programme, is responsible for implementing the sub project in Garba
Tula, Northern Kenya, which was the focus of this governance assessment exercise.
IUCN’s work in Garba Tula (GT) through this project has now been underway for almost two years, and
to date a number of activities have been implemented in the area. This has included: sensitization and
awareness raising of local community members; providing support to help strengthen the operations of
the Resource Advocacy Programme (RAP – a local NGO working in the Garba Tula area); and supporting
work carried out by RAP members to document traditional institutions and strategies for governing
natural resources in the Garba Tula area. The results of the assessment presented in this document build
on this previous work in the area, and aim to establish baseline information on existing natural resource
governance arrangements in Garba Tula, and to identify how these governance mechanisms can best be
improved. This work is intended to contribute to the ultimate aim of the overall project that focuses on
improving the sustainable use and conservation of natural resources, and strengthening the resilience of
livelihoods that directly depend on natural resources.
The Garba Tula District (see Figure 1) is located in the Eastern Province of Kenya, and is home to some
40,000 pastoralists (predominantly of the Borana tribe) and covers approximately 10,000 km 2 . The vast
majority (over 95 percent) of the land in Isiolo/Garba Tula Districts is classified as arid or very arid and
annual rainfall ranges from 150-250mm in the very arid zones in the northern parts of the area to 300-
350mm in the south. The district is hot throughout the year with annual temperatures ranging from
24 o C and 30 o C, and evaporation rates are very high (in places up to ten times the annual rainfall). This is
a serious constraint to agriculture, and the prevailing land use in most of the area is pastoralism. The
vast majority of land in Garba Tula (all except in the limited urban areas) is held in trust by the County
Council of Isiolo. The area has relatively high biodiversity, and neighbours the Meru Conservation Area
(Kenya’s second largest network of protected areas consisting of two national parks and two national
reserves).
The Garba Tula natural resource governance assessment was carried out by David Henson and Robert
Malpas of the Conservation Development Centre, Nairobi, between December 2010 and April 2011, with
support and inputs from the IUCN ESARO Drylands Programme. The study team would especially like to
thank Guyo Roba, Drylands Programme Officer with IUCN ESARO and Daoud Akula, Coordinator of RAP,
for their determined efforts to ensure the success of the GT Governance Assessment Workshop and the
associated field visits.
In response to the Terms of Reference for this study (see Annex 1) the major activities carried out as
part of the GT natural resource governance assessment were:
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