Table 2 Results of oral histories and focus groups

Critical historical factors

In-migrations;

Settlement patterns; Okavango delta seasonal variations;

Opportunistic movement strategies

Biophysical factors; socio-economic and/or socio-political factors

Historical land use practices

 • Ethnic pastoral groups, geopolitical and socio-cultural context

 • Traditional livestock management practices and strategic livestock mobility

 • Tsetse fly and eradication campaign

Tenure, transformation and climate variability

Drought episodes; government policies; Services to Livestock Owners in Communal Areas (SLOCA) and TGLP including animal health policies

Water reticulation through borehole drilling; expansion of usable grazing area

Drought and land tenure transformation

 • Severe drought cycles

 • Communal land privatisation

Livestock diseases; FMD and access to markets; human-wildlife conflicts

Increased fencing, FMD, implementation of FMD vaccination campaign, impacts of elephants on fences;

Opportunistic farming - dual grazing, farmers associations;

Stray animals, mostly not vaccinated and likely responsible for some of the spread of FMD;

Strained, working relationship between farmers and veterinary officials

Diseases, containment and control;

Exclusion from markets;

Consultations and cooperation

The era of livestock disease outbreaks

 • FMD is the most damaging to pastoralism, and the frequent outbreaks have systematically terminated beef exports from Ngamiland, a factor which significantly contributes to the continuous increase in livestock numbers in the communal areas as there is no offtake

Rangeland access;

Rangeland/ranch allocations and consultations;

Perspectives on veterinary cordon fences/animal health policies

Ranch allocation procedures;

Lack of voice in decisions about land use and allocation of land resources;

Traditional water ponds inaccessible, congestion between the fences and the lake, overgrazing and bush encroachment, wildlife migratory corridors between the lake and the sandveld blocked

Allocations and inequitable patterns of rangeland access and use;

Enclosure at the wildlife/livestock interface;

Perspectives on current land use and tenure

 • Rangeland access and control

  ◦ Complex allocation processes that exclude poor communal area pastoralists

 • Human-wildlife conflicts

 • Foot and mouth disease

 • Pastoralists vulnerability

  ◦ Lack of resilience to the occurrences of uncertain events: droughts, livestock diseases, exclusion from markets