Life on the move - Pastoral life and livestock cross-border trade in Northern Uganda through the lens of participatory mapping

Cross-border livestock trade in dryland eastern Africa significantly contributes to the enhancement of food security and generation of wealth. It supports the livelihoods of a wide range of actors including pastoralists, livestock traders and processors.

In this context the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) with finalcial and technical support provided by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), organised a P3DM workshop to identify key spatial characteristics of the livestock trading routes and marketing practices and bring the different stakeholders (including local authorities) around the same table, share information, discuss challenges and envisage mutually beneficial solutions.

The participatory mapping activity took place in Amudat in August 2016 and focused on the Achorichori Micro-catchment in Karamoja which includes Achorichor, Loroo, Amudat and Moruita Parishes. The area falls within the belt of livestock migratory movement, farmlands, cross-border livestock trade, grazing lands and water points. The mapped area covers approximately 546 sq. km.

The mapping exercise helped identify and locate wet and dry season grazing areas, farmland, forests and patchy pastures. Point items include schools, functional and non-functional boreholes, heath facilities, market places, maize mills, police posts but also churches, shrines and small gardens. Community representatives located on the 3D map all features they consider as important to the ir livelihoods. Their feedback about the mapping process are captured in the film.

Other participating organisations included:

ERMIS Africa, Kenya (P3DM facilitation)
ESIPPS International, Uganda (GIS support)
Vision Care Foundation (VCF), Uganda (community mobilizing)

French version of the film:

Inspiring speech by Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim at the Signing of the Paris Climate Change Agreement

PARIS, 22 April 2016 - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited all world leaders to a signing ceremony on 22 April at UN Headquarters for the historic climate agreement that was reached in Paris in December last year. At the request of the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, UN-NGLS led a process for civil society to apply to attend or speak during the opening session of the signing ceremony, involving facilitation of a civil society Selection Committee, who reviewed more than 200 applications received. Ultimately, Ms. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim from the Association des Femmes Peules Autochtones du Tchad (AFPAT) in Chad was selected as the civil society speaker for the opening ceremony of the event.

Hindou is a member of the Executive committee of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), for which she is a representative of the Congo Basin Region, with a background in indigenous peoples' rights and environment protection with the three Rio Conventions (Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification) with multiple responsibilities.

She has organized a series of international workshops on scientific and traditional knowledge systems in partnership with UNESCO, IPACC, CTA, CI and the government of Chad.

Below is the last of a series of three film productions concerning Hindou's the activities centred on merging traditional and scientific knowledge systems and related participatory three-dimensional mapping (P3DM) activities in Chad.

Three-way dialogue on climate change from CTA on Vimeo.

Among the many bus stations of N’djamena the capital city of Chad, travellers coming from the countryside know where to unpack their concerns. The path of Aladji Ibrahim leads to AFPAT, an organisation which represents the rights of Indigenous Peoples, in this case the Bororo herders. Here is where the story starts, a deeply touching one. A story centred around climate change adaptation, where the manufacturing and use of a 3 dimensional model helps bridging the gap between traditions and modernism, local producers and government officials, village elders and scientists, local communities and public powerhouses. Last but not least this film documents how participatory three-dimensional mapping (P3DM) can facilitate the management and mitigation of conflicts over shared natural resources. It shows also that P3DM can support the promotion of human rights and represent a formidable medium for facilitating dialogue among development partners.

French version of the film.

Other film productions part of the series:

Dangers in the bush, map of good faith: https://vimeo.com/53836701
Climate Governance: A matter of survival for nomadic pastoralists: https://vimeo.com/37458698

Further reading:

__________ 2012. Influencing regional policy processes in Climate Change Adaptation through the interaction of African pastoralist traditional knowledge and meteorological science; A Contribution to the Nairobi Work Programme on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. IPACC. 22 pg, September 2012

Making Rangelands Secure - First issue of the Bulletin published

In 2010 the International Land Coalition (ILC) with partners IFAD, IUCN-WISP, Procasur and RECONCILE established a learning initiative for sharing experience and practice in making rangelands secure for local rangeland users. A number of activities have been developed to enable this process. In February 2012 a learning route took place between Nairobi and Arusha, visiting four host communities and/or organisations who shared their own experience of securing rights to their land and resources, in different land tenure and politicial and/or social contexts. Twenty-four participants joined the learning route from around the world, and in particular from East and Horn of Africa. The learning route is being repeated in September 2012, with a large participation from government representatives from Sudan, and in particular Darfur state.

The learning initiative is also working with a number of other partners including Oxfam GB, ILRI, USAID-funded programmes and national governments in the region to further develop and document lessons learnt and influence developing land tenure policies and their implementation. The experiences are being discussed and documented in different forums and through a range of publications. The Making Rangelands Secure Bulletin is one such publication, that provides up-to-date information and news on important and relevant issues, processes and activities taking place in order to better secure rights to rangelands.

Articles provide discussion and information on village land use planning in Tanzania; shared experiences on securing of livestock corridors in West Africa and Sudan; implications of Kenya's Constitution on rangelands; the securing of rights for hunter-gatherers in Tanzania; the development of policy and legislation related to rangelands in Uganda; as well as news from members and partners of the learning initiative.

Linking and geotagging pastoralist and mobile production systems

Both shifting cultivation and pastoralism are essential production systems because they are a living reservoir of adaptive genes. For many traditional populations devoted to such livelihoods, mobility is still perceived as a prerequisite for conserving agrobiodiversity and animals breeds. On the other hand, governments, as well as some conservation organizations alike, tend to associate mobility with uncertainty, poverty, lack of technical skill and, overall, with a precarious life-style: “an endlessly roaming around in search of food”.

As a result, in many southern countries, resettlement schemes are implemented as adjoining strategies to poverty eradication. Moreover, large-scale mining, commercial logging, biofuel and oil-palm plantations further contribute to forcefully sedentarize mobile communities, displacing them from their ancestral territories. Starting from 2009, through a Christensen Fund (TCF) grant to the Centre for Biocultural Diversity (CBCD) of the University of Kent, an attempt has been made to foster communication amongst indigenous communities across regions on perceived common themes.  To pursue this objective, Dr. Dario Novellino (principal investigator of the CBCD project) has worked in close collaboration with other volunteers and researchers, such as Dr. Valentina de Marchi.

One of the key project’s objectives includes the building of solidarity and audiovisual exchanges between representatives of mobile indigenous communities on issues related to the maintenance of agro-biodiversity, hunting/gathering and pastoralists traditions, with a special focus on traditional varieties of crops and animal breeds. More importantly, such exchanges promote the sharing of experiences as a way of 1) fostering reflections and joint actions through the establishment of strategic alliances against extractive-industries; and 2) addressing common problems regarding indigenous links, rights and claims over ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes. The envisaged goal is to enable the production of jointly produced video-materials to be used for exerting pressure at the national and international policy level. Moreover, the project also aims at determining the exact location of bio-cultural diversity hotspots through geotagging and participatory mapping. In a photographic context, geotagging is the process of associating photos with specific geographic locations using GPS coordinates.

One of the ongoing inter-communities exchanges includes the shepherds of the Aurunci Mountains (Central Italy), those of Northern-Italy (Triveneto) and the pastoralists of the Kyrgyz Republic. At the starting, the initiative promoted informal shepherds gatherings in the communities of Maranola (Aurunci) and those of Triveneto, in order to inform local shepherds on Kyrgyz pastoralists’ livelihood and culture (this initial step was carried out through the use of videos and photographs).  Thus, Italian shepherds were informed on the situation faced by traditional stewards in Kyrgyzstan, and about the impact that the political transition from the Soviet Union to an independent republic has had on the local pastoralists’ way of life. In response to the information received, the Italian shepherds decided the topics of the messages they wanted to convey to their Kyrgyz counterpart, in addition to a selection of participatory shootings portraying their everyday practices. A compilation of these participatory audiovisual messages and shootings was edited and saved on DVDs.

Between June and September 2010, such DVDs have been shown amongst Kyrgyz pastoralists in the course of Dr. Valentina De Marchi’s mission in Kyrgyzstan.  As of now, this grass-root audio-visual exchange has proven to be important in terms of strengthening international solidarity amongst stewards of biocultural diversity. More importantly, it has provided marginalized and isolated communities with useful information on what goes on around the world and on the different strategies employed by various communities to protect their land, resources and cultural integrity. The replies from the Kyrgyz pastoralists to the Italian shepherds, have now been taken back to the Aurunci (Italy), and will be shared with the shepherds on the month of May.

During the fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, participatory films on Aurunci and Triveneto shepherds have been screened several times by local pastoralists, especially in Chon-Kemin and At-Bashe valleys. Most of these audio-visual projections took place in individual yurts (tents) or in the course of social gathering (scerinè). The key content of these films, with subtitles and voice-overs in Kyrgyz language, portrays modes of production and grazing systems of Italian shepherds, their livestock, cheese making processes, local criteria for breed selection, perspectives on land and resources management, with particular reference to the conflicts occurring in the context of National Parks and protected areas.  On the whole, shootings on Italian shepherds were very well received by the Kyrgyz counterpart. Specifically, after watching the films, Kyrgyz pastoralists were considerable surprised in discovering that in industrialized countries, such as Italy, pastoralist modes of productions are still thriving, in spite of all challenges. Furthermore, they were surprised in learning that, in a country like Italy (idealized by Kyrgyz pastoralists as a ‘problems free’ Nation), shepherds livelihood and traditions are being threatened due to the implementation of culturally insensitive environmental laws. Overall, video-showing on Italian shepherds did raise, amongst Kyrgyz pastoralists, a number of crucial questions referring to gender issues, loss, transmission/revitalization of traditional knowledge, identity and ethnicity, global policies, forms of governance in different nations, etc.

For instance the film on Italian cheese making fostered a lively discussion on the recovering/revitalization of an old Kyrgyz cheese recipe (egighei) that – at the present - has almost disappeared. This prompted Dr. Valentina De Marchi to support Kyrgyz pastoralists in the documentation of their old egighei recipe. Finally, an initial documentation on the history of egighei was made and the video was shown in front of a diversified audience leading to important reflections on knowledge transmission and revitalization.

In the project’s second phase (Spring/Summer 2011), additional steps will be made in the planning of future exchanges amongst different Kyrgyz communities, which have been separated by international boundaries over long periods of time. Each of them, in their respective host nations, has developed its own counter-strategies for preserving mobility and pastoralist traditions. Our preliminary findings indicate that different Kyrgyz communities are now found in China (Xinjiang, Wuquia, Akqi, Akto, Tekes, Zhaosu, Beicheng, Wushi regions), Tajikistan (Pamir), Turkey (Van e Kars province), Afghanistan (Pamir and Badakhshan) and Altai region (in Russia and Kazak countries). To begin with, the project aims at establishing audio-visual exchanges between those pastoralist communities found in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Northeast Turkey. Such exchanges will focus on issues that will be regarded as relevant by the traditional custodians themselves, such as breeding and livestock knowledge, cultural loss, innovation and adaptation processes.  Some of these activities will be carried out in partnership with other TCF grantees such as the Rural Development Fund (RDF).

by Dario Novellino and Valentina De Marchi

Photo credits: Valentina De Marchi and Dario Novellino