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.

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In the arid lands of northem Kenya, the pastoraUst livelihoods of Boran and Gabra peoples are already under pressure from environmental changes that are increasingly perceived as related to climate change. Indigenous religions, different forms of Christianity, and Islam aU co-exist in this region; each potentially has a role to play in responding to the environmental crisis. Our research suggests that indigenous religions provide a valuable and integrated set of institutions that could potentially facilitate adaptation to climate change. In contrast, the Abrahamic religions have not explicitly engaged with climate change. Moreover, through their relief and development work they have indirectly undermined many of the qualities of mobue pastoraUsm that might enable herders to cope with more unpredictable weather in future. Noting that religior\s appear to be playing a powerful role in the region, we argue that the subject deserves greater attention among scholars of climate change.