Report on a workshop held on September 10, 2004 at King’s College Geography
Department
on
Adaptations in people's rural livelihoods as a result of climatic factors and stresses
in African drylands
The workshop related to collaborative research between the Environment, Politics and
Development Group of the Geography Department of King’s College London and
CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research [Oslo]). The
workshop brought together a group of researchers, including a number of postgraduate
students, who have special interests in the broad area of climate and livelihoods in
dryland Africa, and included some who have particular interests in the sub-theme of
conflict and livelihoods in Africa which relates specifically to the CICERO-funded
research.
The workshop’s remit was to discuss new research and results in these areas and to
attempt to identify new directions and themes within an informal venue. The workshop
programme and attendance list are attached as an appendix to this report.
The theme of ‘climatic factors’ was deliberately broad in order not to confine the
workshop’s discussions to issues related only to definite or postulated climate change.
REPORT
Research on African drylands is driven by many different agendas. In an attempt to give
some structure to the discussions within the workshop the report is not organized
chronologically but relates the participants’ inputs and presentations to five key questions
or themes identified at the beginning by Mike Mortimore, who opened the workshop.
1. Climate Change or Managing the Weather?
Farmers and pastoralists in dryland Africa are accustomed to managing and adapting to
unpredictable climates. There is a host of good research on this. On the other hand the
threat of real shifts in climatic patterns – climate change as a result of global warming etc
– now attracts major funds and dominates discourses in many circles, including the
media. One effect of this is that there may be some disjuncture between problems and
issues perceived and prioritized by indigenous farmers and pastoralists and those
focussed on by the agencies, many academic researchers and policy makers. This is, of
course, an example of the frequently noted tension in many fields between ‘local’ and
‘global’ perceptions and approaches to research questions and policy issues – tensions
which geographers try to address by understanding the relationships between dynamics at
different scales.
This issue partly stems from the fact that local people have to focus on managing shortterm fluctuations as very few are in a position to judge longer term changes. Field
researchers working with indigenous people thus also reflect this perspective.
When discussing work on drylands it is therefore important to pay attention to how the
research is located in relation to these points. More concretely, it is important not to
assume that longstanding adaptations in livelihoods, or even more recent ones, are driven
by climate change – or indeed necessarily by climate at all. Investment barriers, sheer
lack of finance and/or credit, or poor market conditions may be far more essential, for
example. Furthermore, diversification into other livelihoods, and possible reductions in
agricultural and pastoral productivity as a result, may be due to the potential of such
diversification to offer better livelihoods, rather than climatic factors/climate change.
Finding ways to link the local, short-term perspectives and the research on climate
change is an important issue, but as yet remains an unfulfilled challenge.
Discussion and presentations: Most of the adaptations in dryland livelihoods
exemplified by participants at this workshop did not relate to climate change, however
broadly defined. Martin Evans' work from the Casamance did point to downward trends
in rainfall which seem to be fairly longstanding and consonant with those generally
observed across the West African Sahel. The salinization of local paddy fields may have
been exacerbated by this factor, but in addition the non-maintenance of anti-saline dykes,
for a variety of reasons including conflict, was an issue. This links to the need to identify
barriers to adaptive change.
Jeremy Lind's work from the Turkana region of Kenya also exemplified this question.
The Turkana's livelihoods are well adapted to their dry environment and utilise a wide
range of pastoralist strategies which are well known and widely discussed in the
extensive pastoralist literature. Of far more immediate concern to most Turkana today is
the impact of armed conflict which has created a number of barriers and distortions in
these strategies. Although livestock raiding is not new in this region, there are new
elements today. Conflict-related insecurity is often on a much larger scale, the arms are
more deadly, and the outcomes for Turkana livelihoods are far-reaching. It has, for
example, affected the nature of social groupings and mobility, livestock- and labourlending practices, and power relations within households. The sheer scale of the
destruction or loss of assets, which extends far beyond livestock, has been intolerable for
some and driven them from any realistic engagement with pastoralist livelihoods. Any
attempt to ascribe vulnerability within the Turkana's current livelihoods mainly to
climatic factors would be seriously misleading therefore. Both Lind and Evans thus
showed how the effects of conflict are varied, complex and mediated through a range of
processes.
There was some discussion of the view that environmental stresses, including those
related to climate and climate change, might be seen as triggers for some of the
adaptations discussed (MP). In this view, the current scale of conflict and raiding in
Turkana region, for example, would be seen as being driven by intensified struggle for
natural resources as both climatic and demographic factors exacerbated the competitive
claims natural to any social system. It was suggested that changes of government in
Niger and Ethiopia might be attributed in part to such factors. This view was countered
by the presenters at the workshop. For example, the conflict in Turkana was not over
grazing lands which are the obvious 'resource' in this sort of equation. Furthermore, the
frequency of livestock raiding had fallen quite significantly in the Marakwet area near
Turkana in the aftermath of the December 2002 elections which saw the removal of the
ruling party. This appears to be evidence of ‘external’ political and economic forces
being major drivers of the negative changes in Turkana livelihoods, rather than local
environmental factors (JL). In Niger there was no armed conflict or major cattle raiding
(SK). Yet in Guinea Bissau, which falls outside of dryland Africa, cattle raiding across
the border into neighbouring Senegal has increased recently due to conflict-related
dynamics in both countries, including increased poverty and small arms proliferation. In
no way could this be attributed to being driven by environmental stress, climatic or
otherwise (ME).
Marisa Goulden's research in Uganda included livelihood adaptations to lake level
change which were clearly related to climatic fluctuations but not to climate change.
Indeed the fact that one lake had re-filled in the short term had wrongfooted many people.
The immense riskiness of unpredictable climates was thereby yet again exemplified.
2. What is the meaning of livelihood adaptation?
There is also much research which has demonstrated how farmers and pastoralists’
livelihoods are usually made up of a diverse portfolio of income and production streams.
Most of these ‘adaptations’ however are of longstanding. The question of how to identify
those which are driven by, or at least partly related to, real climate change is important.
The vast majority of livelihood adaptations in drylands are not related to climate change.
Many of them are driven by global or local economic and/or political forces.
Misidentification of causes can lead to wasted policy initiatives and resource allocation.
In this respect it is always important to bear in mind issues of scale ie are the adaptations
very local or more widespread; who is involved? Also a sense of history is vital – one
can only judge change (or if adaptations are new) if one can relate what is happening now
to how people have lived in the past. For example, is the ‘adaptation’ a real departure or
has it been used before when particular sets of circumstances arose? The paucity of
really long-term, reliable datasets makes such judgements particularly difficult in Africa,
but probably more efforts could be made to use what is available to good effect. Oral
histories and indigenous knowledge are also essential sources.
Disaggregation of adaptive strategies between ones which are perceived (by researchers)
to have potential for accumulation, and those which are more survivalist and short-term is
an important issue. Such disaggregation is common in some fields of African inquiry,
including urban-based studies. However for dryland African rural livelihoods, there was
some sense that this could obscure what happens more than it could help – the term
‘coping’ strategy was largely to be eschewed, for example. However if livelihood
adaptations are judged, in a broad sense, in relation to empowerment, this can be useful.
It can lead on to analysis of such livelihood strategies in terms of claims and entitlements
to privilege and resources and it is here, in the realm of ‘red hot politics’, that the real
barriers to improved livelihoods often lie.
Discussion: A further complexity in relation to adapting livelihoods is that there may be
a degree of inertia to be overcome before people will ‘invest’ in some changes.
Furthermore perceived risks are dynamic, altering as people adapt their livelihoods (KB).
An important element of some livelihoods today is foreign exchange remittances from the
international diaspora (ie beyond the remittances from intra-sub-Saharan African migrant
destinations). These are important in Sudan, for example, from Saudi Arabia (KL).
In Niger evidence was presented which indicated that the Wodaabe may be gradually
excluded from land by the simple process of the government redefining, agroecologically, the area of the country suited to their dryland pastoral livelihoods. In this
way there is increasing potential for them to be prevented from successful adaptive
strategies.1
The key significance of pastoralists’ rights to land was highlighted and clearly this is
independent of climate change or broader climatic influences. It was suggested that it
might be possible to use the climate change debate to enhance the voices of those arguing
for more secure land rights for dryland pastoralists (SuH). On the other hand there was
some concern that climate change can also be used as a tool to disadvantage pastoralists
yet further since it gave states or other anti-pastoralist stakeholders a seemingly inevitable
scenario from which to argue that pastoralists would have to change their lifestyles in
ways dictated by outsiders. In the Sudan, for example, NGOs use the ‘climate change’
terminology without much consideration for the implications (KL).
In the Casamance, conflict had led to large numbers of people being internally displaced
and this had led to major livelihood adaptations away from natural resource use. Indeed,
in Ziguinchor, the regional capital, IDPs were found to have fewer livelihood activities
related to natural resources than the average urban family(ME).
Marisa Goulden's studies in Uganda indicated also that local people's prioritization of
barriers to successful livelihoods did not highlight environmental factors. Health issues
were very important, for example; another issue was theft of fishing nets. On the other
hand, research by Katharine Vincent in South Africa on gender and environmental
change did not include the issue of climate change, but it was noted that local men do
argue that they perceive that the weather is changing. These studies again highlight the
need to take into account local understandings of livelihood problems rather than simply
try to relate such problems to more visible, often larger-scale processes – a fault evident
in some research, both climate- and conflict-related.
3. Gaps between global/continental models and local-level research: a dialogue of
the ‘deaf’?
Environment and climate modelling is usually undertaken at the global- or very largescale, although livelihood adaptations are generally local. It is often hard to reconcile the
two. In particular the workshop noted the frequent disjuncture between local research
findings about what is going on in arable and livestock agriculture and the ‘big picture’.
The particular example cited, which was familiar to a number of participants, was Steve
Wiggins’ work which compares a wide range of local case studies of African farming,
which often point to some positive trends and outcomes, with the more negative picture
emanating from regional, continental or global-scale analyses. The importance of
1
A particularly useful source on this issue in relation to drylands is a recent UNDP paper, Pastoralists and
mobility in drylands, Nairobi, Dryland Development Centre.
‘ground-truthing’ such broad pictures was stressed. Evidently, this is another take on the
issue of ‘local’ and ‘global’ perceptions and approaches to research questions and policy
issues that is identified in the first question.
Discussion: This issue is one which has recently been emphasised in a series of regional
texts produced by the Developing Areas Research Group of the Institute of British
Geographers/Royal Geographical Society.2
Greater recognition of the need to link the local and global levels in terms of both data
and policy outcomes is occurring. For example the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) has a ‘LDC Fund’ to help the least developed countries to
meet their obligations under the Convention. Local knowledge and research could be fed
in here. In addition there are ‘side’ events held at the annual Conference of Parties
(COPs) to the UNFCCC, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). These events are led by organizations such as IIED specifically to try and
address the need for greater input of people-centred development and livelihood issues
(SuH). Also many countries are preparing National Adaptation Programmes of Action
(NAPAs), which prioritise urgent and longer-term adaptation needs. This is another
opportunity for researchers looking at local livelihood and adaptation issues to feed into
climate change policy making processes.
In the Sudan, KL noted that the settling of the Hawawir on an irrigation project had led to
cultural tensions over the new lifestyles involved, but it was also worth noting that the
settlers perceived some specific advantages including improved access to services. The
cultural significance of being able to move back to their ‘home’ territory was in fact a
more important priority for many, than re-engaging fully with a pastoralist lifestyle. A
willingness to adapt in difficult circumstances was thus evident, as long as certain
cultural values were respected.
Work by Lindsay Stringer in Swaziland supported the hypothesis of a 'dialogue of the
deaf'. Local people's perceptions of the main environmental stresses in their agricultural
landscape point to the need for support in the form of nutrient inputs in their agricultural
systems. Yet the government prefers to present the 'problem' more dramatically, with
reference to unrepresentative erosion features. The unequal potential for accessing global
resources to address such issues may be part of the reason. On the other hand the
tendency to project exaggerated environmental conditions from emblematic, but
unrepresentative, landscape features and worst case scenario erosion statistics is a
common problem in sub-Saharan Africa eg in Zimbabwe and Lesotho (DP). Sometimes
this tendency can be understood as a quirk in the nature of ‘scientific’ enquiry, which
may seek out odd and extreme examples. However, even if such projections are not
deliberately instrumental exaggeration, they may be seized upon by certain actors
seeking to promote a particular policy.
4. How are natural resource/ecosystem management strategies placed within
broader livelihood complexities?
2
See Potts, D. and Bowyer-Bower, T (eds), Eastern and Southern Africa: Development Challenges in a
Volatile Region (Harlow, Pearsons, IBG/DARG Series, 2004) and a forthcoming volume on West Africa.
Where are farmers and pastoralists focussing their own efforts? The state of the natural
environment is only one of the many factors influencing their investment strategies.
Education and health are two other obvious priorities, among a wide range. Households
can be seen as a network of implicit contracts and natural resource management should
not be seen in isolation. The management of overall levels of risk for the household can
lead to trade-offs and intersectoral flows.
It was acknowledged that incentives are often needed to allow effective environmental
management. Within this it is important to recognise how frequently the key problem
can be traced to lack of capital.
Discussion and presentations:
Cultural issues influencing priorities are often underplayed (SK; KL) – this was
exemplified with research from Sudan (SK) and Niger (KL).
In the Sudan, Kjersti Larsen’s research has shown how internally displaced Hawawir
were moved onto an irrigation project after the 1970s drought. They were then repatriated
in the mid-1990s to irrigation schemes set up in homeland. Today they have a range of
livelihoods, the main ones being mobile pastoralism, irrigated farming, and small
businesses in government established settlements. Pastoralism is still seen as an important
way of managing climate constraints, nevertheless, and also as the ‘right’ livelihood by
many local people.
Martin Evans' work from the Casamance identified changes in household composition
which were long established, as migrancy to Dakar had become an important strategy, as
one factor affecting the capacity to maintain paddy fields. This outcome could not be
attributed only to climatic factors therefore.
5. Whose perceptions influence the framing of ‘problems’ and the nature of
‘answers’
Views of African drylands and the pastoralists and farmers who make their livings there
have been dominated by the ‘degradation juggernaut’, presented by scientists since the
1960s. Even today, after considerable input by the social sciences and humanities many
institutions (eg ICRISAT) still think almost solely in terms of technical solutions
(although it is necessary to remember that many such agencies have a mandate to follow
and cannot easily change their research priorities). However it is important to move on
from the debates over the nature and reliability of data and the issue of whether, and what
sort of, environmental change is occurring, albeit these were necessary.
Of greater current relevance is to to look at how to implement policies to improve
livelihoods, and how to resource such positive change. Within this framework, important
questions include: how equally are benefits distributed; do resource tenure structures
allow beneficial adaptation; who are the most vulnerable or excluded from benefits and
decision-making; and how is knowledge stored, created and used, especially in dryland
areas? Who has the knowledge? Is it useful for adaptive purposes? Or inappropriate? The
key significance of indigenous knowledge which, despite much research interest, still
tends to be ignored at policy level needs to be much more widely acknowledged and
incorporated into policies.
Discussion and presentations:
It is important to note that while doing nothing can be measured as costing a lot in terms
of welfare and missed production, frequently there are beneficiaries of underdevelopment
and policy neglect.
Saverio Kratli’s study of the Wodaabe in Niger and their preferred cattle breed, the
Bororo, exemplified a number of these issues about how the creation and storing of
‘knowledge’ can influence policy outcomes in deeply unfair ways. His case study did not
relate to climate change but to climate unpredictability. According to the most publicised
and available ‘scientific’ research within Niger and outside the breed is inferior to
another, smaller breed but careful tracking of the way in which this research has been
done and selectively used suggests that this is not at all clear cut. The Bororo are also
very highly adapted to drought. The issue appears to link to negative state perceptions of
the Wodaabe and attempts to exclude them from national resources.
In Swaziland (LS) the way in which environmental issues affecting livelihoods are
presented by the government is also evidence of these issues. The use of this 'knowledge'
may lead to the rehabilitation of certain elements of environmental degradation, but may
not address the farmers' much more pressing needs for help with nutritional depletion.
Conclusion
The range of questions and evidence presented at this workshop points to the continued
need to realise the complexity of dryland livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. It was
notable that climate change, per se, rarely figured as a factor in the research presented.
The importance of non-climatic factors, including armed conflict, as barriers to livelihood
improvements was also significant. However it should be noted that this in no way
discounts the underlying, structural importance of climate and the wider physical
environment as driving forces in dryland livelihoods. In part, these are givens and the
adaptive outcomes are widely recognised. One danger of livelihoods approaches to
analysis is that these wider, structural, issues can become virtually invisible - although
normally this criticism relates to the problems of ignoring the wider political economy
within which specific livelihoods are situated.
Climate, in particular, is not amenable to policy initiatives at the local level. New
research, and local people's priorities, understandably tend to highlight issues which may
be more amenable to intervention. This is largely to be welcomed because, as discussed
in the points raised above, the identification of barriers to improving livelihoods (and
hopefully the development of policies to enable local people to overcome them) should
be the key dryland research agenda. At the same time it remains important to continue to
engage with the global climate change agenda in order to try and ensure that sub-Saharan
African viewpoints and needs are properly addressed and, just as importantly, not
misrepresented.
Appendix 1
WORKSHOP: Adaptations in rural livelihoods as a result of climatic factors and
stresses in African drylands
Venue: King’s College London (Strand Campus), Geography Department [in Norfolk
Building on Surrey Street, off Strand on eastern side of KCL]
Time: Friday 10th September, 9.30 for 10.00 start
Background
The Environment, Politics and Development Research Group of King’s College London,
in collaboration with CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental
Research-Oslo) is engaged in research on the relationship between conflict and
adaptations to climate factors in African drylands. This workshop will bring together a
group of researchers who have special interests in the broad area of climate and
livelihoods in dryland Africa, and includes some who have particular interests in the subtheme of conflict and livelihoods in Africa which relates specifically to the CICEROfunded research.
As explained in our original invitation the workshop’s remit is to discuss new research
and results in these areas and to identify new directions and themes. We hope to provide
an informal venue in which everyone can feed in their relevant experiences and research.
We are therefore keeping individual presentations to a minimum and are not expecting to
circulate prepared papers etc.
The morning session of the workshop will focus on general livelihood and climate issues;
the afternoon session will include the conflict angle more specifically.
A report on the workshop will be circulated after the meeting. This will attempt (in a
most un-postmodern way) to identify useful generalizations that emerge, as well as key
elements of difference and possible reasons for such differences.
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME:
9.00
Coffee and registration
9.30
Introduction: Jeremy Lind and Debby Potts
10.00 Mike Mortimore: climate and livelihoods research: some central questions
10.30 Discussion
11.15 Coffee
11.30 Kjersti Larsen (University of Oslo, Ethnographic Museum): Hawawir
sedentarization, Sudan
11.45 Saverio Kratli (IDS, Sussex): Bororo cattle selection among the Wodaabe of
Niger
12.00 Discussion
1.00
LUNCH
2.OO Jeremy Lind (EPDG, KCL): Patterns of insecurity and impacts on livelihoods in
south Turkana, Kenya
2.15 Martin Evans (EPDG, KCL): Environmental change, conflict and livelihoods: wet
rice cultivation in the Casamance
2.30-3.15
Discussion
3.30-3.45
Coffee
4.OO
Final Discussions
CICERO WORKSHOP KCL Geography Department, September 10th 2004
Adaptations in people's rural livelihoods as a result of climatic factors and stresses
in African drylands
Participant List
Surname
Baker,
Initial
Kathy
Bowyer-Bower
Evans,
Tanya
Martin
Goulden
Marisa
Huq
Saleemul
Krätli
Larsen
Saverio
Kjersti
Lind
Mortimore
Pelling
Potts,
Reid
Slaymaker
Stringer
Vincent
Jeremy
Mike
Mark
Debby
Hannah
Tom
Lindsay
Katharine
Affiliation
KCL Geog; Envt,
Politics and Devt
Research Group
KCL Geog; EPDG
KCL Geog; EPDG
UEA; Tyndall
Centre
Director, Climate
Change Programme,
IIED
IDS Sussex
Ethnographic
Museum, University
of Oslo
KCL Geog; EPDG
Drylands Research
KCL Geog; EPDG
KCL Geog; EPDG
IIED
ODI
Sheffield U.
UEA
Area of interest
Gambia; environment and agriculture,
West Africa
Drylands
Rice
production/salinization/Senegal/conflic
t
Livelihood diversity and coping with
climate variability in Uganda
Climate change
Bororo cattle/Wodaabe/Niger
Sudan
Turkana/Kenya/conflict/livelihoods
Drylands
Environment and development
Intra-rural migration, Malawi
Climate change
Somali and south Sudan
Environmental change/Swaziland
Climate change/gender/South Africa