Gender and Resilience to Climate Variability in Pastoralists Livelihoods System: Two Case Studies in Kenya

Nancy Omolo,Oscar Ngesa,Paramu Mafongoya

doi:10.5539/jsd.v10n2p218

Nancy Omolo, Oscar Ngesa + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5539/jsd.v10n2p218

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Abstract

Recurrent droughts due to climate change has led to vulnerability of the pastoralist communities, leading to loss of assets and food insecurity. Climate change will have different impacts on women and men’s livelihoods. Building resilience at individual, household and community level will largely depend on the suitability of interventions to the local context, particularly in relation to the social dynamics and power relations that create differences in vulnerability. Most of the research have focused on national and regional studies. The impact of climate change will not be uniformly distributed in countries within Africa or within the same country. This specific research focuses on two diverse ecological zones at the local level in the same County of Turkana in north western Kenya: agro-pastoral zone and primary pastoral zone. This paper aims to evaluate women and men’s adaptive capacity to climate variability in Turkana, north-western Kenya. It is evident that increasing resilience can be realised by reducing vulnerabilities and increasing adaptive capacity. The results revealed that agro-pastoralists are more resilient to climate change than primary pastoralists. Male headed household are more resilient than female headed households. Access to basic services is contributing more in the resilience score than assets, gender of house hold head and age. Generally, few families in this region have very high resilience score.

Highlights

Climate change predictions for Africa indicate that there will be reduced water availability and expansion of the arid and semi-arid regions in sub-Saharan Africa due to climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007)
Above, it was found that ABS (Access to Basic Services like water source, health services, schools, market, mobility to access natural resources) has the highest loading factor on resilience (r = 0.48) followed by assets - AST (r = 0.3) and adaptive capacity - AC (r = 0.24)
The study results shows that women in agro-pastoral zone are more resilient than women in primary pastoral zone

Summary

Introduction

Climate change predictions for Africa indicate that there will be reduced water availability and expansion of the arid and semi-arid regions in sub-Saharan Africa due to climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007). In Sub-Saharan Africa pastoralists inhabit the arid and semi-arid (ASAL) regions which have diverse climate and receive low rainfall. Most pastoral activities in Kenya are concentrated within the country’s vast semi-arid and arid regions. Kenya is vulnerable to climate change, like many other countries in sub-Sahara Africa. According to the National Climate Change Strategy (NCCRS, 2010) the increased reoccurrence of droughts in Kenya’s have reduced famine cycles from twenty years between 1964 and1984, and to twelve years between 1984-1996. The drought cycles have reduced to two years between 2004 and 2006 and to yearly basis in the following years of 2007, 2008 and 2009 (GoK, 2010)

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