CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Velander, Sara Elisabeth |
|---|---|
| Title | Securing Land for Sustainable Livelihoods: Perspectives on Land Reform and Contract Farming in Kenya |
| Summary | Land is a crucial means for sustainable livelihoods and a source of contestation in Kenya’s population who are dependent on the rich, diminishing supply of natural resources. Consequently, a series of interventions were devised and proposed to address land conflict and facilitate the equitable access and productive use of land for rural livelihoods. Two such interventions, namely land reform and contract farming, are heavily disputed among scholars for their threats of exploiting rural dwellers and mechanisms for poverty alleviation and land tenure security. In this study, land reform and contract farming implemented in Kenya are examined according to their implications on the sustainability of rural livelihoods and the roles of actors influencing outcomes, with the overall aim to determine their feasibility in meeting the needs of small-scale producers. Through the application of a hybrid conceptual framework integrating sustainable livelihoods, political ecology, and access on diverse perspectives collected from a literature review and semi-structured interviews with researchers and practitioners, a set of findings emerged determining internal and external mechanisms constraining access to and use of land among rural livelihoods. These mechanisms and outcomes include: profit-oriented motives across micro and macro levels of actors prompting environmental damage and land commodification; absent decentralized support increasing vulnerability to crises; exclusion of impoverished communities; opaque centralized decision- making processes; and appropriation of land functions by domestic private and public actors. This thesis concludes with a set of insights for future planning of approaches to sustainable livelihoods in Kenya that addresses uneven power structures. |
| Supervisor | Pinter, Laszlo; Aistara, Guntra |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/velander_sara.pdf |
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