Esther Mwangi

Esther Mwangi is a Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Center for International Development and a Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

She has a PhD in Public Policy from Indiana University and is co-winner of the 2005 Harold D. Laswell Award for the best Doctoral dissertation in Policy Studies. Her research interests include the role of institutions in fostering sustainable natural resource management and improving local livelihoods, gender, land rights, bridging research and policy, and the politics of policy making in natural resources management and conservation. She was a postdoctoral fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), working specifically with the CGIAR System-Wide program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi). She coordinated a global research project examining the role of collective action and property rights for poverty reduction in East Africa and Asia. Mwangi is studying the implications of forest governance reforms on local livelihoods and forest sustainability in East Africa and Latin America. Prior to joining IFPRI, Mwangi was a consultant to the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) and to OXFAM’s pastoralism program in East/Horn of Africa. Between 1992-1997 she held a position as a Research Scientist with the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Latest work: The Commons in Transition: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead for Environmental and Livelihoods Sustainability. This study will use multiple methodologies to explore the effects of increasing range privatization on vegetation cover and distribution in the Maasai rangelands of Kajiado district in south-western Kenya. The Maasai rangelands, where property rights have changed from various scales of collective holdings to individual, titled parcels over a time span of four decades, provide a unique case for studying the dynamic interactions between property rights institutions and environmental condition. The research also tries to establish the institutional basis for the reconsolidation of individual parcels (an emergent post-individualization strategy) among herders and its effects on land management and livelihoods.  The research will contribute to longstanding debates on critical elements of property rights structures for areas of low and variable productivity, while providing some input into the ongoing search for sustainability indicators.