Helping pastoralists cope and adapt to drought: Marsabit County in Kenya
The current drought in East Africa is one of the worst in living memory. In countries like Kenya, the increasing frequency and intensity of droughts is having a severe impact on communities’ ability to cope.
Take for instance Marsabit County, in northern Kenya, where around 150,000 people are affected by the drought: animals are severely emaciated and dying in record numbers, while the livestock market is collapsing, with a 60% drop in prices as of October 2016.
With most families unable to afford the soaring cost of maize and beans, the risk of serious public health conditions arising from malnutrition is high.
Some households are travelling up to 48km to find a water source, recent reports show. As animals migrate, the itinerant villages who follow the herds are travelling even greater distances, increasing the potential for resource-based conflict and animal disease outbreaks.
Too often, natural disasters like prolonged drought push people beyond their ability to cope and adapt. That is why Christian Aid’s Linking Preparedness Response and Resilience (LPRR) project in Marsabit is helping to mitigate the negative impacts of drought on pastoralist communities.
The project aims to enhance community resilience by addressing the twin threats of natural disasters and man-made conflict. This initiative is helping people to resist and adjust to life-threatening situations and shocks caused by prolonged drought.
Locally led response
As part of the LPRR project, the Marsabit Indigenous Organizations Network (MIONET) — an umbrella of local NGOs — have coordinated various development/humanitarian actors to pool resources and agree food distribution sites.
As a result, relief supplies were equitably shared among the most vulnerable groups. MIONET (which includes Christian Aid’s partner PACIDA) has also been at the forefront of supporting conflict management.
According to local chief, Mr. Galiye, the collaboration between stakeholders has helped to avoid duplication, over supply and/or the exclusion of communities in the emergency response.
In the past, NGOs and government staff led the distribution of relief supplies. This time was different: Christian Aid’s partner PACIDA, through MIONET, highlighted the importance of supplying the limited relief through community structures such as local peace committees. This has helped reduce conflict among communities.
In addition, the local administration and traditional spiritual leaders (the Yaa and Gadha) have ensured that mobile grazing groups out in the fields (known as ‘fora’) are not excluded during emergencies: the chiefs and spiritual leaders set aside food rations for them. By reaching out to the hardest-hit pastoralists, the emergency response has achieved greater equity and inclusion.
Safety to aid resilience
Pastoralists are dependent on security — for instance, they need safe access to water and pasture for their livestock and trade. This is why strengthening their resilience also means tackling violence and managing conflict.
The LPRR project has supported conflict management interventions that have bolstered local governance structures and created greater social cohesion: both of which underpin communities’ resilience to disasters, conflict and other shocks.
Due to the drought, most livestock are concentrated in the buffer zones along Kenya and Ethiopia’s common borders. For example, the area chief of Forole, Mohammed Gura, says animals from as far as Dukana, Makiona, Kalacha, Balesa and North Horr have all converged along the border, where they are now using an Ethiopian borehole.
LPRR conflict analysis identified these buffer zones as a source of conflict. Community peace committees were then tasked with establishing and managing a plan for accessing and using the contested grazing grounds.
This is helping to decrease tensions over pastureland. Since the cross-border committees were set up (with representatives from different groups), no conflicts have been reported among pastoralists crossing the border into Ethiopia seeking water and pasture.
This is because clear livestock migratory routes and agreements over sharing resources have been negotiated agreeably, spearheaded by the community peace committees: there are stern penalties for violating the agreements. As a result, no community from Kenya or Ethiopia has been denied access to the buffer zone resources.
Chief Galiye says:
‘The Elle Borr borehole in the Borana land (in Ethiopia) broke down a week ago, and all livestock had to move to El Lagwarabesa borehole (Gabra Land) for watering. No one questioned anyone for trespassing, since we have seen the negative impact that comes with conflicts and we now appreciate the peace that we have.’
Over 500,000 livestock are estimated to be grazing in vast rangeland between Kenya and Ethiopia. It is hoped that the livestock feeds and water trucking being done by Christian Aid’s partner will enable a good number of livestock to survive the drought and serve as breeding stock.
Community members report that since the LPRR project was implemented, there has been greater freedom of movement, which helps widen their access to water and pasture. This freedom of movement, they say, is critical to their coping and adapting to the effects of the drought.
