LAND DIVISION, DISPOSSESSION AND FENCING IN THE MAASAI MARA, KENYA

The deliverable constitutes a working paper report (under task 5.2) describing the land division, dispossession and fencing occurring in the Maasai Mara of Kenya analysed from a political ecology perspective focusing on the inclusion and exclusion of local people in wildlife conservation. There is a growing concern about the future of wildlife and pastoralism in the Maasai Mara as well as on the communal lands adjacent to the national reserve that serves as home to pastoral communities and as wildlife dispersal areas. A particular concern is an increasing trend of fencing over the past years of what once was an open landscape – a process that appears to be incompatible with traditional pastoralist practices and may lead to further marginalisation of already vulnerable pastoral communities. Although there are studies that have documented the increase of fencing and its possible effects, a thorough investigation into what has provoked such a move by local communities is lacking. NTNU will collect empirical data through ethnographic fieldwork in two villages outside Maasai Mara involving interviews, participant observation and analysis of secondary documents to investigate the events that have lead to the enclosure of communal areas and the increasing fencing of now individually owned plots of land. The analysis conducted by NTNU seeks to explain the observed trend by evaluating the history of group ranches, the processes of land division, the establishment of conservancies and the transformation of land into a tradable commodity. Deliverable 5.8 is presented as a working paper report.