Evolution of models to support community and policy action with science: Balancing pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation in savannas of East Africa

Abstract

We developed a "continual engagement" model to better integrate knowledge from policy makers, communities, and researchers with the goal of promoting more effective action to balance poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation in 4 pastoral ecosystems of East Africa. The model involved the creation of a core boundary-spanning team, including community facilitators, a policy facilitator, and transdisciplinary researchers, responsible for linking with a wide range of actors from local to global scales. Collaborative researcher−facilitator community teams integrated local and scientific knowledge to help communities and policy makers improve herd quality and health, expand biodiversity payment schemes, develop land-use plans, and fully engage together in pastoral and wildlife policy development. This model focused on the creation of hybrid scientific−local knowledge highly relevant to community and policy maker needs. The facilitation team learned to be more effective by focusing on noncontroversial livelihood issues before addressing more difficult wildlife issues, using strategic and periodic engagement with most partners instead of continual engagement, and reducing costs by providing new scientific information only when deemed essential. We conclude by examining the role of facilitation in redressing asymmetries in power in researcher−community−policy maker teams, the role of individual values and character in establishing trust, and how to sustain knowledge-action links when project funding ends.A lthough pastoralists and rangelands have been the subject of research study for decades around the globe, it is only recently that pastoral communities and policy makers have been part of the research process rather than the subjects of study alone or excluded altogether (1). In Africa, the current structure of academic incentives and poor research funding makes it difficult for local researchers to work closely with pastoral communities over the long term, particularly if those researchers live in cities far from pastoral lands. Researchers from outside the region rarely have the opportunity to engage at the depth and over the time required to ensure research is useful to local actors. Agricultural extension in African pastoral lands is difficult not only because of the mobility of some pastoral populations (2) but also because many extension specialists do not recognize the highly adaptive nature of indigenous pastoral management (3). Pastoral households and communities are often the subjects of postgraduate theses or larger research projects in which students and researchers collect information from households and rangelands but rarely have the funds to interpret and return this information to the communities that provided it (e.g., ref. 4). It is even rarer to find research that, from the outset, integrates communities or policy makers in collaborative efforts for the purpose of creating ''research-action arenas'' (5), wherein different groups are integrated to support local action in an action research framewo...

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