A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
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Consequences for Maasai pastoralists of changing water access regimes in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya
Among the Maasai group ranches surrounding Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, perennial springwater from the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro generates an oasis effect in an otherwise water-scarce landscape; it underpins pastoral livelihoods, agricultural productivity, and wildlife conservation economics. This resource, however, is increasingly under pressure from these competing interests. Based on semi-structured interviews, waterscape mapping workshops with Maasai pastoralists, field observations, and visual interpretations of highresolution satellite images, we map, describe and analyse how 70 years of uncoordinated proliferation of water extraction, conveyance, and storage features across the semi-arid savanna rangelands has altered the local water cycle and changed power dynamics around water resources. A succession of externally driven rural development, land reform and conservation policies has contributed to the reshaping of patterns and regimes of access to water by modifying land ownership and attracting new activities such as crop irrigation and safari tourism. As a result, the status of water is shifting from a common-property resource with a tradition of sharing, to a commodified resource that is controlled privately and redistributed according to individualistic strategies. Our focus on three hydrosocial territories from a Maasai perspective examines how high densities of private structures such as wells and small runoff- and pipeline-fed storage reservoirs are pushing the livestock-based, semi-nomadic economy towards intensive, sedentary agriculture. Inequalities in access to water have deepened, with water users associations and other water management organisations also experiencing or generating new forms of conflict between resident communities.
Consequences for Maasai pastoralists of changing water access regimes in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya
Among the Maasai group ranches surrounding Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, perennial springwater from the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro generates an oasis effect in an otherwise water-scarce landscape; it underpins pastoral livelihoods, agricultural productivity, and wildlife conservation economics. This resource, however, is increasingly under pressure from these competing interests. Based on semi-structured interviews, waterscape mapping workshops with Maasai pastoralists, field observations, and visual interpretations of highresolution satellite images, we map, describe and analyse how 70 years of uncoordinated proliferation of water extraction, conveyance, and storage features across the semi-arid savanna rangelands has altered the local water cycle and changed power dynamics around water resources. A succession of externally driven rural development, land reform and conservation policies has contributed to the reshaping of patterns and regimes of access to water by modifying land ownership and attracting new activities such as crop irrigation and safari tourism. As a result, the status of water is shifting from a common-property resource with a tradition of sharing, to a commodified resource that is controlled privately and redistributed according to individualistic strategies. Our focus on three hydrosocial territories from a Maasai perspective examines how high densities of private structures such as wells and small runoff- and pipeline-fed storage reservoirs are pushing the livestock-based, semi-nomadic economy towards intensive, sedentary agriculture. Inequalities in access to water have deepened, with water users associations and other water management organisations also experiencing or generating new forms of conflict between resident communities.
Consequences for Maasai pastoralists of changing water access regimes in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya
Arthur Bostvironnois (author) / François Mialhe (author) / Yanni Gunnell (author) / Oldrich Navratil (author)
2025
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
Unknown
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