Many natural resource management researchers have focused either on institutional design and evaluation or on livelihood outcomes per se without explicitly acknowledging and rigorously examining linkages between the two. Thus, a major gap in the current literature on comanagement institutional arrangements is the extent to which co-management has strengthened the livelihoods of poor forest-dependent communities. This gap is addressed in this paper by developing and testing an argument that well-designed co-management arrangements have strengthened the livelihood outcomes of poor forest-dependent communities in a Kenyan case study. The hybrid analytical framework developed for this analysis situates Ostrom's (1990) design criteria for co-management institutions in the broader context of the Sustainable Livelihood Framework. It then uses this analytical framework to evaluate the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve (ASFR) co-management initiative in Kenya, based on a three-step process. First, the paper provides an overview of current institutional arrangements for governance of the ASFR co-management regime. Second, it evaluates the extent to which these governance arrangements can be characterized as devolved collaborative governance, informed by Ostrom's (1990) design principles and; third, it evaluates the extent to which the livelihood outcomes of forest dependent communities that are participants in the co-management project have had their livelihoods strengthened as a result of the ASFR co-management governance arrangements. The paper demonstrates that the institutional arrangements for ASFR co-management are relatively nascent and emerging because the governance arrangements for the ASFR co-management project cannot be characterized as fully devolved de jure collaborative governance. Notwithstanding this, the findings reveal that participant forest-dependent communities in the co-management project had improved livelihoods compared to forest-dependent communities outside the comanagement scheme. It is suggested that this is due to the de facto co-management arrangements.

The objective of this paper is to examine the current institutional arrangements for governance of the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve (ASFR) and show their major contribution in the ASFR comanagement business of conserving the forest and providing livelihoods to the poor forestdependent communities. Despite the fact that funding from non-governmental organizations ended, the ASFR co-management business did not stall. The institutional arrangements for comanagement were deemed to be the major component that contributed to the continuation of the ASFR co-management business. To demonstrate this hypothesis, the paper explores four main areas that shape the institutional arrangement of the ASFR co-management regime, informed by common property theories: (1) how governance arrangement structures for the ASFR are organized; (2) villagers perceptions and awareness of the co-management structure; (3) comanagement arrangement for access, ownership and use of the various forest resources; and (4) importance of the forest resources to the households. The co-management piloting and nonpiloting communities adjacent to the forest and who have been depending on the forest as a source of their livelihoods are compared in order to understand the role of the ASFR comanagement institutional arrangements in the sustainability of its business

Background: Stone quarrying is one of the major practices carried out in the world by the construction industry. In Kenya and specifically in Mandera County area, stone quarrying industry has grown rapidly in recent years. Objective: This study thus aims at examining the impact that stone quarrying has had on the environment and the livelihood of the communities in Mandera County, Kenya. Methods: Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for data collections and analysis. Results: The study found that stone quarrying has significantly contributed to the incomes of the stone workers, quarry owners and the community. In contrast it was found that stone quarrying also contributes towards negative impacts to the community such as degradation of land and vegetation cover, and affects the health of the residents, for example muscle pain among many quarry workers, cough/asthma, eye problem and malaria. Conclusion: The study recommends that in response to the negative human and environmental impacts experienced in Mandera County, there is need to use technologies that are user and Original Research ArticleMing 'ate and Mohamed; JSRR, 10(5): 1-9, 2016; Article no.JSRR.24945 2 environmentally friendly and rehabilitation of quarries after use if the communities have to continue enjoying the improved livelihood due to stone quarrying.

People’s livelihoods in developing countries are often directly dependent on wetlands and watersheds for the provision of food, water, fuel, wood, fibre, and genetic resources. The high rural population density within the Lake Victoria basin is facilitating the rapid conversion of land to settlement and agriculture. These activities have resulted in the depletion of wetland resources to the extent that they cannot replenish naturally, thus threatening the Nyando wetland ecosystem, potential recreational opportunities, and the livelihoods of local communities. This paper, therefore, examines the implication of Nyando wetland utilisation in provisioning ecosystem services. A case study survey design approach was employed for data collection. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to answer the study objectives. Stratified random sampling was conducted to collect data from 391 households using a structured questionnaire. An interview guide was also used to collect data from stakeholder representatives at the national and county governmental level, non-governmental organisations, and members of the local community. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the quantitative data, while qualitative data were analysed through content analysis by ordering distinct themes into similar categories. A land-use change analysis was performed using an unsupervised classification technique. The results show that the local community depends on the wetland for farming, firewood, settlement, roofing and mat-making materials, and fishing for domestic and commercial use. The local community’s increased demand and utilisation of Nyando wetland resources has contributed to a reduction in the size of the wetland and consequently affected the availability of ecosystem services. Thus, sustainable utilisation of the wetland is needed.

The management of common-pool resources is a key problem in global environmental governance: forests, freshwater resources, pastures, and land are often managed by communities and organisations (bureaucracies, NGOs) at different organisational scales that are competing for the right to manage the resource in question, and often find ambiguous negotiated institutional solutions to co-management problems. Often these solutions are the result of complex bargaining processes rather than of institutional design. In the context of the ongoing debate over the kinds of rules that are appropriate for the sustainable management of common-pool resources (CPRs), this paper examines the local rules and their enforcement emerging from comanagement between government agencies and local project communities in Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve (ASFR), Kenya's largest remaining coastal forest. Arabuko-Sokoke has been a national forest reserve for many decades, but only during the past two decades have communities been involved in conservation and resource extraction under piloting participatory forest-management schemes. A state-owned and controlled resource is made into a co-managed common-pool resource-or so the theory of community-based natural resource management goes. Our contribution is informed by Ostrom's (1990Ostrom's ( , 2008 design principles, but we critically scrutinize the manifold problems involved in transfers of access and management rights from state to local community, and the planned (re-)emergence of common-pool resource management. We compare communities involved in a governmental programme fostering communal management and communities not involved in such programmes (The study addresses a number of critical questions related to the transfer of centralised governmental rights in the management of natural resources, and the comanagement of forests between government agencies and local communities. The ASFR comanagement programme was initiated nearly two decades ago with the aim of conserving the forest and at the same time improving the livelihoods of the communities dependent on it. The findings show that despite a number of challenges, local rules and enforcement have started to emerge in co-managed parts of ASFR, though in an imperfect, volatile and ambiguous manner.