The major economic activity for pastoralists is animal husbandry. The harshenvironment in which herders raise their livestock requires constant mobility toregulate resource utilization via a common property regime. In contrast to themobile way of life characterizing pastoralism, agriculture as a sedentary activity isonly marginally present in the lowlands of the Afar regional state in Ethiopia.Nevertheless, this study reveals a situation where the traditional land–usearrangements in Afar are being transformed due to the introduction of farming.

The vegetation dynamics of semi-arid and arid landscapes are temporally and spatially heterogeneous and subject to various disturbance regimes that act on decadal scales. Traditional field-based monitoring methods have failed to sample adequately in time and space in order to capture this heterogeneity and thus lack the spatial extent and the long-term continuous time series of data necessary to detect anomalous dynamics in landscape behavior.

Communal land use system has existed in pastoral Afar (as in many other pastoral areas) since time of immemorial accommodating the interests of different user groups. This form of land use system, which has adapted to the harsh environment in which herders raise their livestock, enables efficient utilization of scattered pastoral resources since it accommodates constant mobility of livestock. In contrast to the mobile way of life, which characterizes pastoralism, farming as a sedentary activity is only marginally present in the lowlands of the Afar region.

During the drought of 2009 many Kenyan pastoralists were forced to move with their livestock in search of grazing land. We met Ann and her family in the rangelands outside of Nairobi. This is her story of how the drought has affected her life. This photofilm was part of a duckrabbit training productions for ILRI in Nairobi in August 2010. The audio and production was led by ILRI's Muthoni Njiru, Tezira Lore and Julius Nyangaga (formerly with ILRI). The majority of the photos are by David White of duckrabbit).