Ryan Unks

European University Institute | EUI · Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Lindera melissifolia is a federally endangered endemic shrub of the southeastern United States. Numerous populations are gender-biased. The goal of this study was to determine environmental conditions most appropriate for establishment and growth of seedlings and adult females. Seedlings were grown under varied moisture and light to compare growth...

The dynamics of customary land rights and displacement among east African pastoralists have been the subject of extensive scholarly inquiry. Displacement to make way for other land uses, government-led privatization schemes, endogenous subdivision to defend land against outsiders, and progressive enclosure of private land in the context of the rece...

This paper focuses on how political, economic, and biophysical factors shape institutions that mediate how livelihoods and ecological processes align and interact at Koija, a pastoralist group ranch in Mukogodo Division, Laikipia, Kenya. While there is currently a high-profile emphasis on landscape conservation and maintenance of wildlife mobility...

The focus of this study is on how changes in formal and informal institutions have differential impacts across populations in terms of vulnerability of livelihoods to drought, and the unequal processes that shape adaptation to new conditions. Drought vulnerability occurs as a result of exposure and sensitivity to interrelated economic, social, poli...

Categorically distinct instrumental values and non-instrumental "cultural" values of "nature" are central to ecosystem services assessments and many wildlife conservation interventions alike. However, this approach to understanding the value of nature is at odds with social scientific understandings that see value as produced through social-ecologi...

Context Interdisciplinary borrowing between ecology and the social sciences has produced numerous insights about pastoral livelihood practices and rangeland ecology, demonstrating how people practicing pastoralism constantly modify their practices to adapt to social, political, economic, and biophysical change. Objectives I outline an approach for...

In East Africa, pastoralist systems are undergoing rapid transformation due to land enclosures, benefit distributions associated with new land uses, shifting social relations, and changing authority and governance structures. We apply a critical analysis of the institutions that mediate access and benefits across a complex mosaic of property relati...

Throughout Kenya, new governance regimes that are designed to sustain habitat connectivity for wildlife populations outside of national parks have gained increasing prominence. Though these new regimes often center a discursive emphasis on the synergies between wildlife conservation and pastoralist land use, it often remains unclear how they have i...

Climate change, land use change, and sociopolitical and institutional transitions in African drylands have resulted in the loss, fragmentation, and degradation of environmental resources that pastoralists rely upon to sustain their livestock-based livelihoods. Diversification into irrigated agriculture is a potential strategy to increase food secur...

Many scholars of rangeland institutions have found fertile theoretical and empirical ground in early efforts by the Kenyan government and international development agencies to socially engineer a shift from open range to discrete territories held under collective freehold title. A rich literature on the dynamics of subsequent subdivision of these “...

The dynamics of customary land rights and displacement among east African pastoralists have been the subject of extensive scholarly inquiry. Displacement to make way for other land uses, government-led privatization schemes, endogenous subdivision to defend land against outsiders, and progressive enclosure of private land in the context of the rece...

Background/Question/Methods Many traditional pastoralist societies in Africa are facing new and daunting challenges to sustain their production systems in the face of changes in land use and climate. Livelihood diversification offers a range of potentially valuable strategies to adapt to emerging conditions. However, newly adopted strategies may...