Stellah Mikalitsa Mukhovi

University of Nairobi | UON · Department of Geography & Environmental Studies

Transdisciplinary research is considered to offer contributions of science to sustainability transformations, partly because transdisciplinary approaches aim to increase the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific research by ensuring the active participation of non-academic actors in research. However, the possible impact of transdisc...

Ogallo EA, Wambua BN, Mukhovi MS. 2022. Household vulnerability and adaptive capacity on impacts of climate change and adaptability solution in Soroti District, Uganda. Intl J Trop Drylands 6: 63-76. This study aimed to assess the vulnerabilities, impacts, and adaptation strategies of households in the Soroti District, Uganda. The data from househo...

Biological invasions are complex processes requiring coordinated and spatially targeted management. This study assessed spatiotemporal trajectories and determinants of Prosopis cover in Baringo County, Kenya. Land cover data for every seven years between 1988 and 2016 revealed the presence of Prosopis. We tested for trajectory clusters using spatia...

Unlabelled: Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been developed to generate knowledge that effectively fosters the capabilities of various societal actors to realize sustainability transformations. The development of TDR theories, principles, and methods has been largely governed by researchers from the global North and has reflected their context...

Sustainable land management (SLM) practices are key for achieving land degradation neutrality, but their continued implementation lag behind the progression of various forms of land degradation. While many scholars have assessed the drivers of SLM uptake for restoring land affected by desertification, drought, and floods (SDG 15.3 and partly SDG 2....

Background Buffer capacity—the capacity of a social–ecological system to cushion stress and shocks—is often seen as an important dimension of social–ecological system resilience. While numerous studies have focused on other dimensions of resilience in social–ecological systems, literature on buffer capacity is scanty. Methods Two agroindustrial cr...

Our study aimed at understanding the utilization of research knowledge generated in sustainable development research. Drawing on a sample of 54 recent research projects, we investigated how and by whom the knowledge was used, what changes were achieved, and how non-academic actors were involved. As a conceptual framework we combined a concept of "s...

Gullies occur in semi-arid regions characterized by rainfall variability and seasonality, increased overland flow, affecting ecological fragility of an area. In most gully prone areas, extent of land affected by gullies is increasing. Thus, predicting susceptibility to gully erosion in semi-arid environment is an important step towards effectively...

Traditionally, the cost of Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) has largely focused on visible costs, ignoring the hidden costs (HC). The HC of HWC are losses that are uncompensated, temporarily delayed, or psychosocial in nature. HC, such as opportunity costs (OC) are scantly documented to inform policy changes for addressing HWC. This study demonstrates...

Food systems transformative actions are pathways for increased food and nutrition for all, increased household incomes, stronger resilience against vulnerabilities, enhanced equity and justice, increased productivity and sustained environmental integrity. We use one Transformative Pilot Action (TPA) in Kenya to show how community-led innovations ca...

Participatory Food System Sustainability Assessment and Transformation (FoodSAT) is a framework developed after six years research under the research project “Towards food sustainability: Reshaping the coexistence of different food systems in South America and Africa”. The project was anchored in the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues fo...

We are facing a global food crisis: the percentage of people with malnutrition are increasing, along with devastating results for the social-ecological environments, showing the unsustainability of the currently dominant food systems. The complex set of foodrelated problems requires multidimensional perspectives, using inter- and transdisciplinary...

Gullies in semi-arid region are important in landscape modification, degradation and increased overland flow affecting geomorphic thresholds of an area. Gullies generate about 95% of global sediment load, important in landscape modification, degradation and increased overland flow in semi-arid regions, but little is known on geomorphic factors that...

Gullies are a major environmental challenge in semi-arid areas, leading to expansion of semi-arid regions, triggering landslides, causing pollution, limiting agricultural activities and damaging infrastructure, which pose a threat to livelihoods. Despite massive threat posed by gully erosion, farmers lack capacity for designing appropriate rehabili...

While the science of climate change is well investigated across most disciplines, people's perception of climate change effects has not been well addressed. This paper sought to address the question of climate change perception and the effect of climate change on rural household livelihoods within the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya. The study relied...

The Mara River basin is one of the important transboundary resources in Eastern Africa that not only serve Kenya and Tanzania where it is located as one of the watersheads but also serve the lower countries of Sudan and Egypt. Variations in weather conditions, especially rainfall and temperature in the basin have impacts beyond the basin. The envir...

Abstract Food systems must become more sustainable and equitable, a transformation which requires the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. We present a framework of food sustainability that was co-created by academic and non-academic actors and comprises five dimensions: food security, right to food, environmental performance, poverty and...

This article presents empirical results on learning and adaptation to risks among different groups of actors in food systems in two countries of the global south (Kenya and Bolivia). Using a resilience approach, the study sought to assess knowledge about risks perceived by actors, forms of learning that actors in food systems have access to and use...

Mara River basin forms part of the Upper Nile catchment and critical for the Maasai Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. Its rich mix of land cover types including natural forests and open savanna are threatened by unplanned land uses in the upper catchment. The objective of the study was to determine the nature and extent of change in land cover and land use...

Human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) affect the social-economic aspects of millions of people across the world and is one of the most important challenges facing wildlife conservation. Long-term data collection provides an opportunity to critically understand HWC trends and enable wildlife stakeholders to create evidence-based solutions for coexistence o...

The research project "Towards Food Sustainability: Reshaping the Coexistence of Different Food Systems in South America and Africa" (2015-2017) had one of its key outcomes the development of food sustainability framework (FOODSAF). The second phase (2019-2020) of the project involves implementation of Transformative Pilot Actions (TPAs) which are s...

This paper reviews the Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) studies in Kenya with special interest on the hidden opportunity costs. The paper considered the negative implications to the victims of HWC and explores ways of ensuring full integration of all costs especially in regard to the search for more comprehensive compensation frameworks. One of the sp...

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on how to attribute and evaluate the contribution of transdisciplinary research to sustainable development. As co-created knowledge is a key product of transdisciplinary research, we tested the hypothesis that the extent to which this knowledge is utilized beyond the project consortia, in different a...

Food systems face pressures related to global environmental change and agricultural intensification that make access to productive resources difficult for many actors. Social self-organization is one of the measures taken by actors to enable them to increase their capacity to mitigate challenges and increase their influence as well as build resilie...

Climate extremes have increased in the recent past and they are further being exacerbated by climate change and variability. In this paper, we sought to determine rainfall characteristics over the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya in 1987-2016, as a basis of understanding climate variability. The methodology used included; Standardized Precipitation Ind...

Mara River basin forms part of the Upper Nile catchment and critical for the Maasai Mara – Serengeti ecosystem. Its rich mix of land cover types including natural forests andopen savanna are threatened by unplanned land uses in the upper catchment. The objective of the study was to determine the nature and extent of change in land cover and land us...

Food system sustainability depends, among other aspects, on the resilience of different components of food systems. By resilience, we mean the ability of a food system to withstand stress and shocks, recover, and adapt to change. In this study, we examined the resilience of food systems, firstly, by compiling the risks perceived by different food s...

Kenya has ratified several Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) and they all emphasize promotion of human well-being - through equitable sharing of benefits accruing from such conservation and protection schemes. Thi...

Abstract Small-scale irrigation is generally recommended in Africa. However, very few studies have compared water consumption and crop yield between small- and large-scale irrigation areas. Thus, little empirical evidence that the former is superior to the latter exists. Three types of surveys were conducted to compare the conditions of rice cultiv...

This paper explores how buffer capacity, an important dimension of resilience, can be used to identify options for improving the social-ecological resilience of food systems in a mountain ecosystem. The study surveyed three food systems namely; an agroindustrial food system (horticulture), a regional food system (beef, barley and wheat and milk), a...

Resilience is often considered a precondition for sustainable social-ecological systems. But how can this understanding of resilience be applied to food systems? We operationalized the concept by subdividing it into different resilience dimensions, namely: buffer capacity, self-organization, and capacity for learning and adaptation. Specific indica...

At the centre of smallholders’ adaptation is a need to understand their perceptions on key climatic scenarios so as to glean helpful information for key decision-making processes. In Kenya at the moment, downstream information regarding these circumstances remain scanty, with many smallholders being ‘on their own’, in spite of the imminent threats...

Background: At the centre of smallholders’ adaptation is a need to understand their perceptions on key climatic scenarios so as to glean helpful information for key decision-making processes. In Kenya at the moment, downstream information regarding these circumstances remain scanty, with many smallholders being ‘on their own’, in spite of the immin...

Food system resilience is crucial to food system sustainability. This resilience can be assessed by analysing the following characteristics of food system actors: first, how they maintain social-ecological buffer capacities, including diversity of landscapes, habitats, crops, income sources, and equity of land distribution. Second, their degree of...

The study was undertaken in Kongelai Ward, West Pokot County, because of its vulnerability to changing and erratic rainfall pattern which has adversely affected pastoralism. It focused on better understanding of climate change and variability on two climatic factors, rainfall and temperature, in order to provide insights on pastoralists’ risk manag...

Food system resilience can be defined as the capacity of food systems to cope with and to withstand and recover quickly from disturbance and disasters (both ecological and anthropogenic), as well as to learn and to adapt. Three dimensions of social-ecological resilience are used: buffer capacity (livelihood assets, functional and response diversity...

The aims of the study were to: 1) determine the wildlife population trends in the Mara Enoonkishu Conservancy from the eyes and minds of the public, 2) assess the recent trends in wildlife populations based on actual scientific counts, and 3) compare the two patterns and establish whether they are similar or not. The solicitation of public views wa...

This paper aims to establish whether there is a significant difference in nutritional status of children in male-headed households, de jure female-headed households and de facto female-headed households. The study uses a sample of 199 children aged 6 to 60 months, of mothers in reproductive age, derived from 499 smallholder households in rural Keny...

The factors that hinder farm intensification process among smallholders in Kenya are many and varied. These factors are not gender neutral; they affect the ability of both men and women to achieve greater productivity in agriculture. Lack of farm intensification contributes to stagnation of agriculture, increases poverty and limits rural developmen...

The factors that hinder farm intensification process among smallholders in Kenya are many and varied. These factors are not gender neutral; they affect the ability of both men and women to achieve greater productivity in agriculture. Lack of farm intensification contributes to stagnation of agriculture, increases poverty and limits rural developmen...