Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa

Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa
provides systematic and robust empirical investigations on the impact
of climate change on pastoral production systems, as well as
participating in the ongoing debate over the efficacy of traditional
pastoralism. This book is an initial product of the Project Building
Knowledge to Support Climate Change Adaptation for Pastoralist
Communities in East Africa implemented by the Centre for Climate Change
Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam with support from the Open
Society Initiative for Eastern Africa.

Traditional pastoralism has
proved to be a resilient and unique system of adaptations in a dynamic
process of unpredictable climatic variability and continuous human
interactions with the natural environment in dryland ecosystems.
Pastoral adaptations and climate-induced innovative coping mechanisms
have strategically been embedded in the indigenous social structures and
resource management value systems. Pastoral livelihoods have,
nevertheless, become increasingly vulnerable to climate change impacts
as a result of prolonged marginalization and harmful external
interventions. The negative effect of global climate change has been an
added dimension to the already prevailing crisis in the pastoral
livelihood system, which is substantially driven by non-climatic factors
of internal and external pressures of change such as population growth,
bad governance and shrinking rangelands lost to competing activities.