Applying the concept of resilience to pastoralist household data

Abstract

This article explores the concept of resilience as outlined in a recent World Bank publication that applies the concept to rangeland areas in Africa. The paper does not attempt to speak to all of the dimensions of resilience and debates about the concept's applications to pastoral ecology and rangelands. Instead, we utilize a panel data set from northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia that has been analysed in other published studies to reconsider it from a resilience perspective. We show how different livelihood groups in the region are impacted by climate, disease, market, conflict, and land use shocks in a time characterized by a drought phase and a recovery phase. In many cases, there are livelihood-specific impacts of these shocks, and these help explain long-term herd dynamics and pastoralist poverty traps. Our analysis then turns to different ways of measuring resilience and finds that measurements of combined income and asset thresholds provide the most convincing outcomes. We further assess some broader opportunities and innovations that have the potential to enhance resilience in the drylands. Finally, different policy relevant steps that can be taken to enhance resilience are discussed in the context of the considerable heterogeneity in livelihood strategies which occurs in African rangelands.

Resilience from the ground up: how are local resilience perceptions and global frameworks aligned?

“…The patterns of resilience and food security shown here are in line with other studies documenting social changes in the Sahel (Elmqvist and Olsson, 2007;McPeak and Little, 2017). Thus, factors linked to resilience are generally linked to positive social outcomes from other types of development interventions, whether climatefocused or not.…”

“…In Mali, those that had agriculture as their primary income also felt more resilient, whereas in Senegal male household heads felt more resilient. This is a generalisable result as wives of the same households reported lower resilience than their husbands did (McPeak and Little, 2017). We interpret that agricultural households that are sedentary are better off than pastoralist and mobile households, with more diverse livelihoods (a well-known strategy in the Sahel) enabling better risk management.…”

“…This is a generalisable result as wives of the same households reported lower resilience than their husbands did (McPeak and Little, 2017). In Mali, those that had agriculture as their primary income also felt more resilient, whereas in Senegal male household heads felt more resilient.…”

Applying livestock thresholds to examine poverty in Karamoja

“…For example, whereas the wealthiest 30% of the agro-pastoralist and pastoralist population in Karamoja owned of livestock (Fig. 1), in 11 different pastoralist ethnic groups in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, the wealthiest 30% of households owned 75% of livestock in terms of TLU (McPeak and Little (2017). Similarly, in Afar and Somali regions of Ethiopia, the wealthiest 30% of households owned approximately 75.7% and 71.2% of livestock, respectively (Sabates-Wheeler and Lind 2013).…”

“…As proposed by studies in Kenya and Ethiopia, poverty in pastoralist areas is best understood by measuring both livestock assets and income (McPeak and Little 2017). In part, this is because the limited livestock ownership among poorer households means that they must use non-livestock sources of food income to meet their basic needs.…”