Total Economic Valuation of Kenya’s Arid and Semi Arid Lands

INTRODUCTION

Pastoralism remains central to providing a means of livelihoods in the arid and semi-arid lands of the world. However, it is usually undervalued due to limited information on its economic values resulting in very sceptic attitude and inadequate policy and institutional support to its development. It has, therefore been important to generate adequate information to demonstrate the Total Economic Value of this production system. To this effect, conventional measures of national income such as Gross Domestic
Product (GDP), Gross National Product (GNP) and Net National Product (NNP) which have been used in decision making and development planning. But these indicators have limitations in terms of for their ability to measure wealth and societal welfare.