Camels and Climate Resilience: Adaptation in Northern Kenya

Abstract

In the drylands of Africa, pastoralists have been facing new challenges, including those related to environmental shocks and stresses. In northern Kenya, under conditions of reduced rainfall and more frequent droughts, one response has been for pastoralists to focus increasingly on camel herding. Camels have started to be kept at higher altitudes and by people who rarely kept camels before. The development has been understood as a climate change adaptation strategy and as a means to improve climate resilience. Since 2003, development organizations have started to further the trend by distributing camels in the region. Up to now, little has been known about the nature of, reasons for, or ramifications of the increased reliance on camels. The paper addresses these questions and concludes that camels improve resilience in this dryland region, but only under certain climate change scenarios, and only for some groups.

Pastoralist societies in flux: A conceptual framework analysis of herding and land use among the Mukugodo Maasai of Kenya

“…Recent scholarship on pastoralism has benefitted from shifting its focus away from traditional views of pastoral economics to more modern approaches that incorporate the important links between globalization, local markets, migration, economic opportunities, and traditional pastoral livelihoods (Bollig and Lesorogol 2016;Bond 2014;Catley et al 2013;Galaty 2016;Gertel and LeHeron 2011;Jandreau and Berkes 2016;Kibet et al 2016;Mwangi 2016;Watson et al 2016). These new opportunities have subsequently generated new behavioural adaptations and economic strategies that require us to reclassify many of the livelihood tactics and approaches used by modern pastoralists we presented in Table 1.…”

Monomeric Camelus dromedarius GSTM1 at low pH is structurally more thermostable than its native dimeric form

“…Camelus dromedarius is adapted to extreme desert climate including elevated solar radiation, temperature, dryness, low nutrition, and scarcity of water [38,39]. They are exposed to intrinsic and xenobiotic toxic agents that can damage cellular macromolecules (proteins and nucleic acids).…”

Herding through Uncertainties – Principles and Practices. Exploring the Interfaces of Pastoralists and Uncertainty. Results from a Literature Review

“…This situation is often reported in literature on Asian and Sub-Saharan African contexts: some Borana groups swinging from cattle to camels (Coppock, 1994;Watson et al, 2016;Volpato and King, 2018); southern Somalis shifting from camels and smallstock to cattle (Al-Najim, 1991); the Afar and Maasai (Eriksen and Marin, 2011;Bilha, 2015;Berhe et al, 2017) as much as some Fulani/Peul/Fulbe groups (Turner, 2011;Eriksen and Marin, 2011;Kima et al, 2015) changing from cattle to smallstocks. The phenomenon is also visible in parts of north-western India, whereby the move into smallstock, especially goats, should be seen as an adaptation by the rural poor to utilise the ecological and institutional niches and interstices available to marginal social groups (Robbins, 1994).…”