At last week’s GLF Africa event, we joined 50 or so people to explore ways that an alternative ‘grounded’ narrative can enhance investments, opportunities and outcomes for pastoralists and rangelands.
Many observers think of drylands and rangelands as dry, empty, degraded, remote and unproductive places, and pastoralist communities living there as poor, insecure and vulnerable. This perception, far from the truth, fuels ‘scarcity’ narratives that overlook the fundamental strengths and capabilities of dryland communities and local organizations on the ground and promote policies, investments and actions focused on overcoming perceived weaknesses in the face of droughts, disasters, diseases and other threats.
Convened by the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Action, IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the CLimate Adaptation and REsilience (CLARE) Programme, this session explored what investments in the Horn of Africa’s drylands can achieve when the starting point is an ‘abundance narrative’ grounded in the capacities, innovation, adaptability and entrepreneurship of pastoralists and supported by progressive policies.
Opening the discussion, Guyo Malicha Roba, Head of Dryland Development at ICPALD, Ikal Ang’elei, indigenous researcher and political ecologist from Turkana and Samuel Derbyshire, Regional Research Lead at the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action and ILRI explored four questions: how narrative shapes investments in drylands, what we mean by an ‘abundance’ narrative, and what some promising investment examples of this abundance narrative look like.
A key point from Ikal, that recurred later in the group discussions, was to remember abundance ‘for whom’!
Thereafter, participants engaged in intensive small group discussions with seven speakers who shared and discussed their work in relation to this ‘abundance’ narrative:
- Ahmed Mohamoud (ICPALD and PASSAGE project): actionable climate risk information delivers more resilient futures
- Alice Odingo (university of Nairobi and PALM TREES project): inclusive community actions counter extreme events
- Watson Lepariyo (ILRI): crowd-sourced data and information better guide pastoralist livelihood decisions
- Edinah Samuel (UNICEF Sustainable WASH Innovation Hub): inclusive governance and innovative finance contribute to water-secure futures
- Ikal Ang’elei (Friends of Lake Turkana): community activism achieves environmental justice
- Guyo Roba (ICPALD): coherent regional policies on transhumance drive pastoral prosperity
- Sam Derbyshire (ILRI and Jameel Observatory): understanding how anticipatory action frames the future moving us from a focus on probabilities to a focus on possibilities
In their group discussions, participants were asked to consider 1) what an ‘abundance’ narrative or paradigm should look like, and 2) what actions could take forward such a narrative?
Working with notes captured in the groups, the points included:
- Build up what’s already there in the drylands (culture, traditional knowledge, communal living) instead of identifying what’s ‘lacking’.
- Document, and draw on, traditional knowledge so we can capitalize on this abundance; placing pastoralists as experts.
- Change the narrative that pastoralists are dependent with insufficient skills and resources; instead pitch them as resource managers and climate experts.
- Look beyond livestock as the main economic value for pastoralists and drylands, so other opportunities and actors benefit.
- Determine ‘what works’ or doesn’t bottom up by those most affected and involved.
- Package risk narratives for pastoralists to understand, instead of using the language of conferences and board rooms.
- Abundance for whom? Make sure the private sector can benefit.
- Assess the ‘abundance’ of a project through its social impact, gender inclusion, access to data, community empowerment.
- An abundance investment should include asset mapping by communities, provide long term investments and strengthen customary systems.
Reflecting on what they saw and heard, Bilach Jimale (DLCI) and Susan Njambi-Szlapka (University of Edinburgh and Jameel Observatory) shared some specific points from the group discussions:
- Policies, such as one on transhumance, offer solutions to many of the challenges facing drylands, including climate change, livestock diseases, cross-border mobility and trade. The IGAD Transhumance Protocol represents a significant policy opportunity to share abundant resources by improving regional coordination, strengthening pastoral livelihoods, and addressing shared dryland challenges.
- The drylands are rich in resources on the surface, beneath, and above. Communities are often short-changed because they are unaware of the abundant resources they have and they end up receiving little or no benefit. Driving environmental justice can be achieved by harnessing the rich knowledge, solidarity, lived experience, and organising power of dryland communities and taking actions including community asset mapping, empowering communities to make informed decisions about available resources, strengthening customary tenure rights and making the right infrastructure investments.
- Determining ‘good’ early action in dryland areas is a challenge. Much of the early, or anticipatory, action that we see doesn’t take account of the solutions and indicators that people already have. Benefitting from this abundance requires that success is defined from bottom up; shifting from “this place needs X” to” this place has Y strengths” that can be built upon.
- In data collection and monitoring, ground truthing is key but difficult to measure. As an example, what communities call ‘success’ doesn’t always align with what scientists say it is. Where indicators shape interventions, it’s important to find terms and measures that reflect individual and community objectives rather than scientists’ metrics.
- Where actions and interventions are guided by mechanistic pre-determined ‘triggers’, it is important to consider if and how they strengthen or undermine long standing local institutions and relations with local leaders. Where early warning and action was previously much more localised, shifts in funding and technological developments make it more centralized. The risk is that local knowledge, agency and ownership is undermined rather than strengthened.
- Keep it local and inclusive: Work with the grain and uplift what exists; don’t undermine or replace; consider local incentives and indicators; work through existing social networks, norms and champions; and involve men and women for longevity.
In closing, Mercy Ojoyi (IDRC and CLARE Programme) shared some overall take-away points:
- Protecting rangelands is essential to food systems and builds resilience to climate change
- Rangelands are being overlooked and are central to climate mitigation.
- Protecting rangelands is essential to strong food systems and resilience building
- Scale up solutions, put in more investments in rangeland management and protect mobility
- Pastoralism depends on well-functioning systems
- Indigenous knowledge systems, data and technology should be co-created with communities
- Bridge the gap between indigenous and scientific knowledge
- Governance systems should incorporate views from communities and their leaders
- Organize engagement with pastoralists that leads to inclusivity