Communities in the Karamoja cluster rely heavily on land and water for opportunistic farming and livestock production. As in any other context, the borderland communities have established systems for sharing these natural resources, based on both customary law or traditions, and formal administrative, policy and legislative frameworks. Whereas the communities have relied on and continue to deploy traditional natural resources sharing and management systems, their incorporation in their respective countries’ political economy has subjected them to formal and hybrid mechanisms. Thus, the Cross-Border Community Resilience (CBCR) Activity’s goals of enhancing resilience and hence reducing the need for humanitarian assistance among communities in the Karamoja cross-border cluster is achievable with a comprehensive understanding of the natural resource systems (NRM) in the cluster.

CBCR commissioned this NRM analysis to present a comprehensive overview of the existing resource sharing and natural resource management (NRM) systems in the Karamoja cross-border cluster. To this end, an examination of the existing natural resources in the Karamoja cluster, together with ownership and control of these resources among men and women, the formal and informal NRM arrangements at the local, national and regional levels, and changes in the natural resources over the years (as occasioned by climate change, human activity and large-scale infrastructure projects) inform part of this reports’ comprehensive analysis of the NRM in the Karamoja cluster. Additionally, the main gaps in equitable and harmonious resource sharing and NRM including capacity needs at various levels, how arrangements can be strengthened, and how cross-border policies can be harmonized, are significantly discussed in various parts of this report.

Although this report contributes to CBCR’s programming objectives, its findings are also useful to development practitioners both in government and non-government in the Karamoja cluster. I therefore invite interested partners and other actors in the Karamoja cluster to make use of the reports’ findings in their own work and learning processes.