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Built on earlier quantitative assessment of the socio-economic drivers of the above changes, this paper focuses on the role of national level policies implemented in the area over the past decades, and how these have affected the traditional institutional setting that determines land use, property rights and pathways of livestock development.The paper uses a literature review combined with in-depth key informant and group interviews to identify key policies and interventions, assess their impacts and explore the responses and strategies adopted at both individual and community levels to cope with the changing situation.Conclusions:the advent of cultivation in the overwhelming majority of the communities coincides with the creation of the peasant associations, which formally endorse private rights to croplands, as opposed to the now weakened authority of the traditional elders. So whatever the incentives generated by internal socio-economic, demographic and market variables, the previous strong system of communal resource management may have been responsible for the virtual absence of cultivation in Borana before the creation of the peasant associationsthe emerging pressure on the rangelands is not only a function of demographic and socio-economic variables, but also environmental variables such as bush encroachmentthe development of road networks and market centres in the last decades increased the interaction of pastoralists and neighbouring agro-pastoral ethnic groups. This interaction could be associated with incentives such as lower information and learning costs for the adoption of crops. The impact of droughts should also be recognised in the sense that many communities reported the drought prone nature of the area to be the primary reason for staying together as commons. That is, the maintenance of common property grazing arrangements and the failure of some communities to adopt crops are motivated by a desire to guarantee mobility at all times
