Climate Change and Pastoralism: Traditional Coping Mechanisms and Conflict in the Horn of Africa

"This book is not only attempting to understand and document the problem, and analyze the interventions but also to understand the traditional coping mechanisms of pastoral communities and evaluate whether external interventions streamline those mechanisms. Environmental disasters are not new phenomena to this region, thus pastoralist communities are assumed to have developed coping mechanisms to survive such disasters which have allowed them survive across the generations. However, there isn’t sufficient research and literature that addresses whether the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) of the member states and the activities of IGAD and various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) streamline these traditional mechanisms into their interventions. It is important to understand the traditional coping mechanisms and see if they are incorporated into external interventions and identify the benefits and difficulties of doing so in addressing the threat posed by climate change. Furthermore, there is a need to fill this knowledge gap by providing empirical evidence for some of the correlations that seem to be taken for granted by writers and academics. For example, a positive correlation between resource scarcity (pasture and/or water) and conflict is assumed, and provision of modern education to pastoralists is considered as a step in the right direction towards resolution of their problems, with little or no empirical evidence. There is a need to test these notions using case studies and provide supporting empirical evidence, if they prove to hold true."