From cattle to camels: trajectories of livelihood adaptation and social-ecological resilience in a Kenyan pastoralist community

Volpato, Gabriele; King, Elizabeth G.

doi:10.1007/s10113-018-1438-z

Cited by 40 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…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).…”

Section: Restructuring Herd Compositionmentioning

confidence: 70%

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

Nori

2019

SSRN Journal

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This paper has been written as a background review for the European Research Council-funded PASTRES project (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins, www.pastres.org). Lessons from pastoralists, we argue, may help other domains to develop more effective responses to uncertain contexts. Following prof. Scoones' paper What is uncertainty and why does it matter ?, this is one of two papers developed with a view to analyse and reflect on the interfaces and interrelationships between pastoral societies, the uncertainties that embed their livelihoods, and the related coping/adaptive principles, strategies, and practices. Through a structured review and a meta-analysis of existing literature, the environmental, market, and governance dimensions characterizing uncertainty for pastoralists are explored in six different settings: a) Central and southern Asia, with specific references to the Tibetan plateau in China and to Indian pastoralists; b) the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, with a focus on Morocco in the Maghreb-Mashreq region and a wider perspective on pastoralism in Mediterranean Europe; c) the eastern and western flanks of Sub-Saharan Africa drylands, with a specific focus on the Fulani and Borana pastoral groups inhabiting these regions. This paper assesses the practices and strategies pastoral communities adopt in responding to the stresses and shocks generated by the uncertainties that surround them in these diverse settings, with a view to understand and appreciate the underpinning inspiring principles. The responses displayed and applied by pastoral communities show in fact relevant and intriguing degrees of similarity across the regions. This helps identify a common framework and a set of overarching principles and patterns for pastoralists in dealing with risk and uncertainty. The paper concludes by indicating potential ways we could learn from pastoralists, as part of a wider conversation about embracing uncertainties to meet the challenges of our turbulent world. This endeavour is complemented by another paper that explores the diverse and constantly changing uncertainty frameworks characterising different pastoral regions of the globe.

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Section: Restructuring Herd Compositionmentioning

confidence: 70%

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

Nori

2019

SSRN Journal

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“…This study highlights that the choices of individuals and communities and their struggles should be understood within the wider framework of livelihood and community agency and adaptation to an environment in constant transformation [24,28].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other studies conducted in Africa [6,20] and elsewhere [21,22] have highlighted the di culties for intervention programs to strike a balance between fostering economic empowerment while promoting environmental conservation and supporting cultural diversity. These aspects are of particular relevance in those contexts where beekeeping and honey have already been part of traditional livelihood strategies, as technological innovations and production intensi cation can trigger changes that feedback on the complex and dynamic relationships between humans and the surrounding environment, and on the knowledge that underpins them [23,24]. As such, these changes should be investigated, understood and embedded into development initiatives [25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding the reach. Ethnobotanical knowledge and technological intensification in beekeeping among the Ogiek of the Mau Forest, Kenya

Zocchi

Volpato

Chalo

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background Initiatives for beekeeping intensification across the tropics can foster production and income, but the changes triggered by the introduction of modern beehives might permeate traditional knowledge and practices in multiple ways, and as such should be investigated and understood. We conducted an ethnobotanical study in the Eastern part of the Mau Forest among Ogiek beekeepers who customarily practice forest beekeeping and who are involved in a project aimed at the modernization of their beekeeping activities. We aimed to document the beekeeping-associated ethnobotanical knowledge, exploring the relationships and complementarity between modern and traditional knowledge and practices. Methods Field research was carried out through semi-structured interviews with 30 Ogiek beekeepers and 10 additional stakeholders. We collected ethnobotanical data about plants used for beekeeping purposes, and ethnographic information on traditional and modern beekeeping systems. Results We report 66 plant species, distributed across 36 botanical families representing 58 genera, important as melliferous, for the construction and placing of hives, attracting bees, and harvesting and storing honey. Dombeya torrida (J.F.Gmel.) Bamps, Juniperus procera Hochst. ex Endl., and Podocarpus latifolius (Thunb.) R.Br. ex Mirb are the species with the most mentions and the highest number of uses. Our study reveals that the Ogiek possess a detailed knowledge of the forest’s flora, its importance and uses, and that this knowledge underpins beekeeping practices. Under the influence of external actors, the Ogiek have progressively adopted modern versus traditional log hives and moved beekeeping out of the forest into open areas of pastures and crop fields. Beekeepers are also experimenting with combinations of practices borrowed from modern and traditional beekeeping systems, particularly in the field of hive construction and in the criteria to set up apiaries. Conclusions The study indicates a complementarity and an incipient hybridization of traditional and modern beekeeping, in a way that suggests that modern beehives are instrumental in expanding the reach of beekeeping into deforested and cultivated areas. The study also points to the existence of a rift in the effects of beekeeping intensification on the livelihoods of the Ogiek and on their relationship with the forest. We argue that this intensification might be improving the former but weakening the latter, carrying the associated risk of erosion of traditional forest-based ethnobotanical knowledge.

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“…The enactment process requires additional social and natural capacities to be matched and mobilized [117,118]. For example, although pastoralists may have the financial capital to choose to switch to the more drought-resilient practice of camel husbandry, their success and realized benefits depend on access to additional capacities during enactment, like social networks with other camel owners and veterinary knowledge [119] (see box 1). The temporal sequentiality of decision-making and enactment in ESLA emphasizes the need for policies to consider at the outset which capacities people will need to successfully navigate both stages of adaptation [56].…”

Section: Adaptation Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For these reasons, camels may provide a more steady and sustainable stream of provisioning services given the current state of natural capital, and thus would appear to be a 'win-win' adaptation strategy from the perspective of ecological sustainability and benefits for human well-being. Volpato and King (2019) used the ESLA framework prospectively to design ethnographic research which sought to understand why only about 10% of households had adopted camel husbandry ( figure 4) [108]. Adoption of camel husbandry is a broadly transformative livelihood change.…”

Section: The Maa-speaking Pastoralists Of the Laikipia Plateau In Normentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing the integration of ecosystem services and livelihood adaptation

King

Nelson

McGreevy

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Around the world today, the magnitude and rates of environmental, social, and economic change are undermining the sustainability of many rural societies that rely directly on natural resources for their livelihoods. Sustainable development efforts seek to promote livelihood adaptations that enhance food security and reduce social-ecological vulnerability, but these efforts are hampered by the difficulty of understanding the complexity and dynamism of rural livelihood systems. Disparate research avenues are strengthening our ability to grapple with complexity. But we are only just beginning to find ways to simultaneously account for problematic complexities, including multiscalar feedbacks in the ecosystems that that support livelihoods, the heterogeneous benefits garnered by different segments of society, and the complex contingencies that constrain people's decisions and capacities to adapt. To provide a more nuanced analysis of the dynamics of transformation in rural livelihood systems, we identified key complementarities between four different research approaches, enabling us to integrate them in a novel research framework that can guide empirical and modeling research on livelihood adaptation. The framework capitalizes upon parallel concepts of sequentiality in (1) ecosystem services and (2) livelihood adaptation scholarship, then incorporates principles from (3) adaptation in social-ecological systems research to account for the dynamism inherent in these often rapidly-transforming systems. Lastly, we include advances in (4) agent-based modeling, which couples human decisions and land use change and provides tools to incorporate complex social-ecological feedbacks in simulation studies of livelihood adaptation. Here we describe the new Ecosystem Services-Livelihood Adaptation (ESLA) framework, explain how it links the contributing approaches, and illustrate its application with two case studies. We offer guidance for its implementation in empirical and modeling research, and conclude with a discussion of current challenges in sustainability science and the contributions that could be gained through research guided by the ESLA framework. sustainability of small-scale natural resource-dependent (SSNRD) livelihood systems worldwide. In such rapidly transforming systems, achieving Sustainable Development Goals simultaneously for improved human well-being, poverty reduction, food security, and environmental sustainability will require effective and holistic strategies for livelihood adaptation [2].

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From cattle to camels: trajectories of livelihood adaptation and social-ecological resilience in a Kenyan pastoralist community

Cited by 40 publications

References 91 publications

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

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

Expanding the reach. Ethnobotanical knowledge and technological intensification in beekeeping among the Ogiek of the Mau Forest, Kenya

Advancing the integration of ecosystem services and livelihood adaptation

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