This inter-disciplinary research analyses critically the discourse on people-driven institutional and social innovations in institutionalizing social ingenuity and elevate this to a higher paradigm of linking the innovations at grassroots level to national policies and praxis.

1. Treatise and Praxis linking
Social Ingenuity and Institutional
Innovations in Sustainable
Development
Costantinos BT Costantinos, PhD
Emerging Paradigms, Technologies and Innovations for SD:
Global Imperatives and African Realities,
African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS),
18th and 24th, November 2012, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
18th and 24th, November 2012
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

2. Contents
• Introduction
• Statement of the problem, objectives and research
questions
• Methodology and research protocol
• Observations and analysis of findings
– Major stresses of livelihood
– Developmental responses enhancing adaptive strategies
– Local Adaptive Strategies that lead to sustainable livelihoods
•
Splitting the herds into home and satellite herds, Transhumant pastoralism, Social adaptation and innovations,
Food habit, adoption of farming and marketing and Water Management:
– Policies that impact on adaptive strategies in arid and semi-arid lands
•
Pastoral Land Tenure: Legal Status, Policies and Policy Outcomes and Policy Constraints:
• Linking social ingenuity to institutional innovations
in SD
–
–
–
–
Institutionalising social ingenuity
Agency for institutionalising social ingenuity
Ideological basis for institutionalising social ingenuity
Possibilities and problems of institutionalising social ingenuity
• Conclusion
– The Afars and Borans are not passive victims
– Policy instruments that enhance adaptive strategies
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3. Research sites
Emergency areas
• Drought
• Conflicts
• Pests
Two research sites in Borana are in Areri and
Dubluk Meddas, in southern Ethiopia. The Afar
region is located in north-east Ethiopia within
the Great Rift Valley bounded by Djibouti, Shoa
and Wollo, Tigray and Eritrea and Issa Somalia
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in the south.

4. Statement of the problem,
objectives and research questions
• Vulnerability
– Overpopulation has resulted in destruction of the ecosystem;
– As the people become poorer, they destroy their resource quicker;
– Resource degradation aggravates poverty;
• Research questions
– What social innovations in SD do exist in communities?
– What are the challenges to these innovations?
– What measures are being taken to institutionalise these
innovations into production practices?
• Objective: this inter-disciplinary research analyses
critically the discourse on people-driven
institutional and social innovations in
institutionalising social ingenuity and elevate this to
a higher paradigm of linking the innovations at
grassroots level to national policies and praxis.
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5. Methodology and research protocol
• Methodologically:
– Qualitative data
–
were collected and collated used to
explain the migration of social innovations to institutional
structures,
Quantitative data were used to explain the occurrences of
social innovations and degree of assimilation into institutional
practices.
• Protocol:
– particular adaptive strategies, which lead to
sustainable livelihoods,
– multiple vulnerability (ecological, socio-political,
economic, etc.,) and a community that is representative
of arid & semi-arid lands
– available resources and institutional arrangements for
implementation
– communities that have experienced significant internal
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and external changes

6. Observations and analysis of findings
• The thesis of the study :
– the prospects, nature and outcomes of adaptive
strategies depend on the constitution of social /
civic institutions in civil society.
• Major stresses of livelihood
– Human-made stresses include expansion of
irrigation schemes, game reserves and inter-ethnic
conflicts.
– Natural strains include the reduction of the total
vegetation cover due to decreasing precipitation, the
invasion of undesirable plant species, drought, bush
encroachment and loss of desirable species, human
and livestock diseases and flooding
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7. Adaptive Strategies that
lead to sustainable livelihoods
• Adaptive strategies are unique ways in which
each culture uses its physical environment;
those aspects of culture that serve to provide the
necessities of life;
• Sustainable livelihoods are derived from
people's capacity to survive shocks and stresses
and improve their material condition without
jeopardizing the livelihood options of other
people’s – it requires reliance on both
capabilities and assets for a means of living. A
livelihood is sustainable if it can cope with,
recover from and adapt to stresses and shocks,
maintain and enhance its capabilities and assets,
and enhance opportunities for the next
generation.
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8. Adaptive Strategies that
lead to sustainable livelihoods
• Splitting the herds into home and
satellite herds
– Two types of herd are kept by the Afar: home herds
(homa) and satellite herds (magida).
– The Borans maintain at least three combined
livestock species which include cattle, goats, sheep
and sometimes camels and horses.
This multi-species composition of livestock holding
has the advantage of utilising both browse and grass
species in the plant community, and hence providing a
continuous supply of human food.
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9. Adaptive Strategies that
lead to sustainable livelihoods
• Transhumant pastoralism (seasonal migration):
– The Afar and Boran practise both regular and irregular
patterns of herd movement because of drought, flooding and
increasing pressure over pasture.
– The most important rule is one that restricts cutting of useful
fodder trees without the permission of clan elders.
– During stresses a ‘cut and feed system’ is adopted.
– Early weaning of animals is another strategy adapted.
– Traditionally, Borans had the practice of burning their
grazing land every three years to control undesirable plant
species and reduce tick infestation
– The evolution of selling dairy products has also become
another survival strategy to sustain livelihoods. and improve
quality and quantity of pastures.
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10. Adaptive Strategies that
lead to sustainable livelihoods
• Social adaptation and innovations:
– The Afars in the Middle Awash adopt different kinds of
intra-clan co-operation and wealth redistribution in
instances of extreme wealth disparity.
• Hantila is a shared rearing of livestock between a poor
household and a large stock owner
• Irbu is a mechanism whereby those households who lose their
livestock through raiding or epidemics are compensated
• Digibihara is where clan members are expected to contribute
cattle or small stock to be slaughtered at weddings
– The Borans have an elaborate indigenous social
organisation based on the principle of the peace of the
Borans known as Nagaiya Borana and the quality of
being Borans known as Borantiti.
– Traditionally population increase is regulated through a
custom that protects a mother from any kind of sexual
intercourse until the baby is weaned;
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11. Food habit and adoption of
farming and marketing
• The main staple food is dairy followed by grain
and meat. Most of the Afar chew chat Catha
edulis and smoke tobacco. Butter is believed to
be medicinal
• In times of drought,
– The food supply includes boiled maize, unleavened
bread and boiled sorghum;
– active participation in maize production activities ;
– increasing participation of women in cotton-picking
activities ;
– They sell livestock and livestock products and buy
food & House hold commodities
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12. Water Management:
• Borans sources of water: underground and
surface water:
– Tulla - deep traditional water wells: twelve people are
needed to make a chain in order to lift water from the
Tullas using traditionally made buckets locally known
as Ocole.
– Ella - shallow wells: four people are required to lift
water,
– Lola – floodwater;
– Haro - pond water. The ponds are mostly constructed
by hand. Wells are managed by well councils known as
Abba Hiregha. Ponds are supplementary to the
permanent water sources (wells). this alternative source
of water helps pastoralists to distribute their herd and
thereby reduce grazing pressure near permanent
watering points. This helps to reduce soil erosion. 12

13. Policies that impact on adaptive
strategies in arid and semi-arid lands
• Pastoral Land Tenure: Legal Status, Policies and
Policy Outcomes
• Policy Constraints
– no legal provision that explicitly regulates the status of
pastoral areas prior to the 1955 Revised Constitution of
the Empire of Ethiopia
– The legal status of pastoral areas, perhaps for the first
time, was determined by the 1955 Revised Constitution
and further elaborated by the Ethiopian Civil Code of
1960.
– Further laws have been promulgated by subsequent
governments. All the legal provisions, in one way or
another, explicitly or implicitly, make pastoral lands the
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property of the state.

14. Linking social ingenuity to
institutional innovations in SD
• Agency for institutionalising social ingenuity
• Ideological institutionalising social ingenuity
– Do SD thought and practice enter as external ‘ideologies’,
constructing and deploying their concepts in sterile
abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions,
beliefs and values in institutionalising social ingenuity?
– Do ideas of SD come into play in total opposition to or in cooperation with historic national values and senti-ments?
– Do regimes equate the articulation of their partisan agendas
with the production of broad-based concepts, norms and
goals, which should govern their leadership of SD?
– Do they signify change in terms of the transformation of the
immediate stuff of politics into an activity mediated and
guided by objective and critical standards and principles?
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15. is an integrated package of policy,
technology and investment strategies
together with appropriate decision-making
tools which are used together to promote
sustainable livelihoods by building on local
adaptive strategies
Sustainable Livelihoods
Issues
• Unfettered exploitation vs. Economic
Efficiency
• Central vs. decentralised control
• Statutory vs. customary rights
• Modern vs. endogenous knowledge
systems
• Formal vs. endogenous institutions
• Few uses and users vs. diverse uses and
users of assets
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16. Conclusion
• The Afars and Borans are not passive victims
• Policy instruments that enhance adaptive strategies
– Government has adopted a number of policies whose
themes and principles are embodied in the macro level
policies: regionalisation, decentralisation, participation,
and reduction of the role of the state in the economy.
– The National Conservation Strategy, the Natural
Resources Development and Protection Strategy, the
Agricultural Development Led Industrialisation
Strategy (ADLI); the Proclamation to Provide for the
Utilisation of Water Resources (92/1994); the
Proclamation on Forestry Conservation, Development
and Utilisation (94/1994) - all place emphasis on either
facilitating avenues and leeway for solving problems
linked with consumption requirements, or protecting
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and conserving resources

17. – Proclamation No. 41 relating to decentralisation
gives responsibility to the regions for the
preparation of their plans for financing from locally
generated revenue as well as the capital budget.
– Proclamation 15/1993 and 33/1993 on
regionalisation whereby sectoral ministries are
replicated at the regional, zonal and district levels
with full responsibilities within areas of competence
• Issues for thought
– Pastoralists, like any actor engaged in the
production of commodities, are price responsive. It
is, therefore, necessary to redesign financial
institutions that facilitate their integration into the
market without forfeiting opportunities favouring
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their advantages

18. – Decentralised/federalised governments, local
administrations and the communities need to know
about and accept and be empowered to implement
the sectoral policies
– Programme interventions should be preceded by a
careful consideration of all the variables that are
detrimental in shaping the nature of outcomes;
– Region-specific action plan will be required for the
National Adaptive Strategies of the Poor as well as
for disaster management
– A growing array of qualitative and quantitative
research more specifically suggests that legal
empowerment has helped advance poverty
alleviation, good governance, and other
development goals. Hence, the issues to be
addressed in legal empowerment are:
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19. • What reforms are necessary to develop transparent legal
and institutional arrangements in which pastoralist have
confidence, can access justice, and which will contribute to
a culture of fairness, equity and rule of law? How can locally
appropriate dispute resolution mechanisms support
people?
• What special considerations should be given to indigenous
peoples’ customary norms, traditions and legal structures?
• How can improved public management boost public trust?
• How can property rights incorporate and recognize
indigenous norms and structures (combining legitimacy
and legality)? How can user rights, collective rights and
communal rights be recognized and protected?
• How can the entrepreneurial innovation and creativity in
the informal economy be channelled into the formal
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economy? (UNCLEP, 2005)

20. Thank You
Costantinos BT Costantinos, PhD
Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies, College of
Management, Information and Economic Sciences
costy@costantinos.net
www.costantinos.net
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