Rethinking Climate Adaptation Among Pastoralist Communities in Africa
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Rethinking Climate Adaptation Among Pastoralist Communities in Africa
By Davis Mwania, Research Analyst, Botho Emerging Markets Group
March 23, 2023
As the world gets warmer, the earth is getting “sun-bathed” you may think, but the world is sunburned and urgently needs sunscreen. In the African continent, the effects of climate change range from increasingly frequent droughts in Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan, to sudden floods in Chad and Niger, which have disrupted local communities and their economic livelihoods. Present multilateral and multi-stakeholder efforts in climate adaptation measures, including early detection and warning systems (EDWS), do not symbiotically engage with pastoral communities. Rather they employ cut-and-paste techno-managerial approaches, which do not fit well in unique cultural and market contexts. Pastoralist communities, which live predominantly in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), are highly exposed to climatic catastrophes and lack the right support for their adaptation mechanisms.
The ongoing drought in Kenya left around 4.3 million people in danger of starvation in August 2022. By October, huge livestock losses led to a livestock market crash in one of the pastoral areas in Kenya, where a goat or a sheep sold at $0.76 (Ksh100) and a cow at $3.8 (Ksh 500), which is around 50-100 times less than the average market value. Aside from economic effects, climate hazards have negative psychological and sociological impacts, especially for pastoralists, who derive their sense of well-being and cultural pride from livestock. To solve these socioeconomic challenges, African governments may consider minilateral agreements with regional and international partners to scale knowledge transfer, spur the implementation of transborder livestock corridors, enhance livestock supply chains, and leverage economies of scale across pastoral lands.
With the advent of minilateralism and considering climate adaptation as a shared goal across boundaries, there lies the potential for collaboration between countries in East and West Africa across the Sahel. In particular, Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) members in Eastern Africa could partner with the Global Shield alliance, a cooperation between the Vulnerable 20 Group of Finance Ministers (V20) and the Group of Seven (G7), that avails prearranged financial protection in the event of a climate disaster. An IGAD-Global Shield partnership (IGSP) would solidify a multi-agency effort in implementing cross-border climate adaptation measures among pastoralists, who account for 20% of the population in IGAD’s eight countries (namely Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda).
An IGSP could deepen multi-stakeholder collaboration among key players encompassing local community institutions, government, non-government, and private actors. For instance, non-governmental organizations could scale humanitarian operations across East-West Africa in partnership with governments and private actors in the wake of disasters. IGSP would accelerate stakeholder learning needed for workable solutions in cooperation with locals. The collaboration could enable governments to strengthen livestock corridors that support cross-border transhumance (seasonal mobility) routes for pastoralists that have long adapted to climatic variability and uncertainty through moving. In East Africa, ongoing changes in land use and tenure systems, some of them associated with diversification from grazing to agriculture, can hinder pastoral adaptation and add more stress to the remaining fragmented grazing areas.
However, transhumance in West and Central Africa has been marked by conflicts between farmers and herders across borders. IGSP would enable governments to investigate and resolve conflicts across the region, some of which are politically and economically motivated, while simultaneously learning from the internal conflict resolution mechanisms. Considering that insecurity is a regional issue, IGSP would also help mobilize security forces both regionally and internationally to scale security missions and operations in tandem with local pastoral communities to foster stability. In addition, governments could leverage economies of scale, and pool resources together to upgrade existing infrastructure, such as EDWS and roads, and make them more adapted to local realities and needs in ASALs to boost the livestock industry. Nevertheless, governments need to ensure that access to the limited pastoral lands is safeguarded, to avoid marginalizing poorer pastoralists from communal resources that they depend on.
With all of the IGAD countries within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the IGSP would enhance market access and value addition for the livestock sector, which contributes around 35% to the agricultural Gross Domestic Product in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). IGSP would harmonize cross-border data collection and market monitoring utilizing COMESA’s database for livestock enterprises that was collected to develop the livestock value chain by linking animal fatteners, feedlot operators, abattoirs, and slaughterhouses to regional and international markets. Within IGSP, this database could be extended to West Africa and other countries within the V20 such as Ghana.
With effective national and regional government coordination, IGSP would also grease private sector involvement to capture the opportunities to meet the market needs of pastoral communities that range from telecommunication, mobile phones, insurance, and banking services to providing cross-breeding, antibiotics, and vaccination services. Furthermore, IGSP would increase the establishment of public-private partnerships, which may propel investment in the value-addition of the sector through establishing livestock industry hubs across the supply chains in various countries. Given an increased market size within the IGSP, governments would incentivize the private sector by setting up initial capital investments and providing favorable land leases in consultation with local communities and tax regimes.
An IGSP would also require stakeholders to learn from and work closely with the locals to devise workable solutions that respond to local contexts. For instance, insurance programs, such as the Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI), which has been rolled out in Kenya and Ethiopia, have reported minimal adoption rates. They have highlighted that private-sector finance models that apply a cut-and-paste approach in incentivizing pastoralists to have more cash savings rather than herd sizes, may not be feasible. Thus, they should invest in building the right relationships by eliminating negative perceptions of pastoral systems and by fostering local community participation in project design and implementation.
To transition from reactionary short-term responses to long-term responses, there needs to be political goodwill among local and international leaders. The approach of governments, private actors, and non-governmental actors within the IGSP needs to be marked with humility, acknowledging that these communities have long-lived experiences living in dryland environments. Instead of imposing solutions, such as diversification of pastoralism into agriculture, finding out adaptation measures from pastoral communities and capitalizing on them may chart win-win pathways for all.
This article is written by Davis Mwania, Analyst, at Botho Emerging Markets Group with some contributions from Edwige Marty, a Ph.D. Researcher on the socio-political dimensions of Climate Change Adaptation processes in Southern Kenya.