In 2023 and 2024, Sake Godana Duba’s MSc fieldwork on climatic shocks and responses in northern Kenya was supported through a graduate fellowship program jointly funded by the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action at the International Livestock Research Institute and the Centre for Research and Development in Drylands. Here we summarize findings and insights from her research at the University of Debrecen.
Using focus group discussions, key informant interviews, narrative interviews and semi-structured interviews ,she set out to characterize climatic shocks and their impacts on Borana pastoralists and their livelihoods in Sololo area of Moyale in Northern Kenya. Analyzing the response measures taken by local people and their perspectives on the humanitarian responses, the aim was to unpack synergies and inconsistencies and to highlight changes in approaches to drought and related shocks.
The images are all from her fieldwork.
Climatic shocks
In the past forty years, pastoral communities in the Sololo area of northern Kenya experienced increasing climate variability and shocks – mainly drought but also occasional conflict, locust invasions and periodic floods. Her study set out to characterize these shocks and their impacts. She also analyzed the response measures taken by local people and their perspectives on humanitarian responses.
Her results show that droughts were the main events recorded, with the last dozen years described by the pastoralists as drought years with recurring extreme drought episodes singled out post-2000. Borana pastoralists in Sololo categorize these in four types – normal, moderate, severe, and extreme droughts. Normal and moderate types were considered to cause minimum impacts on livelihoods and where the associated shocks can be managed within the capacities of the community.
Severe and extreme droughts are associated with substantial livestock loss, crop failure and low household food security. Extreme droughts are usually when some additional compounding factors exacerbate the effects of, for instance, complete failure of the rainy season. The 1983/1984, 2010/2011, 2016/2017 and 2020-2022 droughts were classed as severe, with many households temporarily or permanently unable to sustain their livelihoods.
These droughts particularly reduce animal feed resources, increase competition for grazing land, and reduce mobility options, ultimately reducing livestock numbers, – leading to fewer productive assets and compromised family food security, especially for children.
Drought responses
Drought responses are usually taken by communities themselves, together with any support from external agencies, including the government, development projects and humanitarian agencies.
Various community strategies are used at different phases of drought cycles – before, during and after. Depending on specific circumstances, different strategies are employed by different people, with not all responses suitable for every drought situation and some applied at household and individual levels while others are taken at community level.
These strategies included: Movement and settlement in dry season grazing areas, traditional stock sharing (Dabare) and restocking mechanisms , livestock sales, splitting of herds and restricted grazing in some landscapes. Other strategies – not widely applied within a traditional pastoral practice but employed by some households within the community – include charcoal production, getting food on credit, fodder purchase, gathering edible wild fruits for food and working in farming and urban areas.
External support from Non-Governmental Organizations, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, and government agencies is an increasingly important response. Overall, this support varies with the emergency level and the population of poor households. Changes in humanitarian responses have been observed over time. According to local respondents, relief assistance was traditionally in the form of relief food, however, food for work, cash for work and cash transfer programs have emerged in the last two or so decades.
Herd restocking after drought was another response by NGOs in which pastoralists are given specific number of livestock to reconstitute their herd. Other support services provided include emergency water trucking and hay distribution during severe droughts, fixing boreholes, and providing veterinary services to contain outbreaks of diseases.
Reflections
Her study highlights the heterogeneity in both the perception of hazards, impacts and the responses to the various shocks and crises. It reveals increased pastoralist vulnerability, particularly to droughts, the different state of preparedness to manage shocks, and the variable effectiveness of both local and external responses in different areas.
Her study also highlights key lessons:
Despite learning from previous shocks, responses to climatic disasters are still reactive, reflecting some misalignment between local level responses and the external humanitarian responses.
While local social networks play important roles building collective resilience through systems of reciprocity designed to assist most vulnerable households, even these were overstretched by the recent recurrent and protracted droughts.
The effectiveness of some of the ‘front line’ local level actions such as restricted dry season grazing zones, locally managed water points and hay storage was reduced by compounding factors such as insecurities and weakened rangeland governance.
The quantity, frequency and the timeliness of emergency humanitarian assistance is not always optimal – reaching too few people and with interventions that are too late.
The architecture of local and humanitarian responses vary and are not always synchronized. While community responses are generally rapid and strongly embedded in their social networks, humanitarian responses mostly do not build on such locally embedded and highly flexible adaptive practices.
While humanitarian aid is mostly short-term, longer-term interventions geared towards helping communities withstand future crises on their own is minimal. Successful longer-term responses, such as governmental social protection systems, need to be scaled up to include the growing numbers of vulnerable people.
