Pastoralists in the Samburu region of Kenya, like many pastoralists around the world, have endured significant effects of social-ecological change. Improvements in infrastructure, access to education, roads, and cellular networks, combined with changing land tenure systems and impacts from more frequent extreme weather events place Samburu herders squarely in the middle of substantial change. In our study, we interviewed 100 pastoralists to determine how income sources changed over the past 20 years, following an extreme drought in 1998, as a measure of adapting to change. Questions about livestock holdings, income sources, and household demographics were used to conduct a cluster analysis and group comparisons that indicated Samburu pastoralists have chosen one of three primary paths in the past 20 years: increased herd size and retained pastoralism as a primary income source; reduced herd size but retained livestock herding as the primary income source, while adding other modest sources of income; and substantially reduced herd size and pursued non-herding options as a primary income source. Our results show a number of differences among Samburu pastoralists, and the extent to which paths were chosen primarily to alleviate adverse impacts from social-ecological change is unclear, as community members provided numerous explanations for changing herd size.

中文翻译：

---

肯尼亚桑布鲁的牧民利用收入多样化作为适应社会生态变化的战略

与世界各地的许多牧民一样，肯尼亚桑布鲁地区的牧民也遭受了社会生态变化的重大影响。基础设施的改善，获得教育，道路和蜂窝网络的能力，以及不断变化的土地保有权制度以及更频繁的极端天气事件的影响，使桑布鲁牧民处于重大变革的正中间。在我们的研究中，我们采访了100位牧民，以确定在1998年极端干旱之后过去20年中收入来源的变化，以此作为适应变化的一种手段。有关牲畜拥有量，收入来源和家庭人口统计的问题用于进行聚类分析和组比较，表明桑布鲁牧民在过去20年中选择了以下三种主要途径之一：增加畜群规模，并以放牧为主要收入来源；减少畜群规模，但保留牲畜作为主要收入来源，同时增加其他适度的收入来源；大幅减少了牛群的规模，并寻求非放牧方式作为主要收入来源。我们的研究结果表明，桑布鲁牧民之间存在许多差异，目前尚不清楚主要为减轻社会生态变化带来的不利影响而选择路径的程度，因为社区成员为改变牛群规模提供了许多解释。