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Sarah Posner was awarded the NSF Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award (HEGS-DDRI) for her project, 'The Role of Local Institutions in Managing Pastoralists' Natural Resources and Related Conflict in Northern Kenya’.

Project Overview

This project investigates the��role of local institutions, both formal and informal, in��managing natural resources and related conflict among pastoralists. Local institutions are key for pastoralist societies in arid rangelands operating in an environment of a weak state where inter-communal conflict is endemic and often disruptive to livelihoods. Isiolo County, located in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) of Northern Kenya, is an ideal region to��investigate natural resource management due to its ecological, cultural, and ethnic diversity. The county hosts four prominent pastoralist societies, the Samburu, Turkana, Borana, and Somali with varying institutional arrangements (formal, informal, and hybridized) to manage natural resources including water and pasture. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, utilizing primary quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) to locate, measure, and predict the social outcomes of local institutions (cooperative or conflictual) across these four pastoralist communities in Isiolo county, Kenya. Results from the study can be generalized to other arid rangelands across East Africa and pastoralist contexts to improve natural resource management and violence prevention.

Intellectual Merit

By studying individuals’ perceptions of their institutional environments, we can better��understand how natural resources are managed and how related conflict and cooperation dynamics evolve. This is especially pertinent in regions where governmental and traditional natural resource governance rules and norms overlap and at times, conflict. Despite numerous studies on national-level and formal local-level institutions, few studies investigate both formal and informal institutions and their��relation to low-level, intercommunal conflict across multiple pastoralist societies. There is conflicting evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa on��whether these institutions exacerbate��or mitigate tensions between competing groups, with effectiveness varying across institutional contexts. By integrating methodological approaches and theoretical insights from environmental security, political ecology, and common property literature, this study advances scholarly literature in Geography and Development Studies on the social outcomes of local institutions managing natural resources during a time of accelerating environmental and climatic change.

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Broader Impacts

Despite pastoralists having developed institutions to manage water and grazing resources among and between groups, armed conflict in the form of inter-communal cattle raiding persists in the arid rangelands. The IPCC warns that climate change may exacerbate these dynamics as, “there is increasing evidence linking increased temperatures and drought to conflict risk in Africa (high confidence),” particularly in populations that depend on agriculture or are politically excluded (IPCC 2022, p. 9).” By investigating the role of both formal and informal institutions utilized by a range of pastoralist groups operating in a marginalized region far from the locus of power in the Kenyan state, this study will inform local level peacebuilding efforts and resource management policies. The study also enhances local research capacity��by training and hiring a team of local research assistants and enumerators which will ensure high-quality data collection through sophisticated survey methods and sharpen the co-PI’s fieldwork skills in the process of completion of the dissertation. By building local capacity, this research not only strengthens academic infrastructure but also promotes knowledge exchange that can improve natural resource management practices and policies.