Pastoralism and climate change: enabling adaptive capacity
This report highlights the arguments necessary to showcase the adaptive potential of pastoralism to climate change and to promote investment in pastoral areas in East Africa.
It is part of the Reducing the Vulnerability of Pastoral Communities through Policy and Practice Change in the Horn and East Africa Project (RGLAP). The report presented here is organised into three arguments. Argument 1 highlights how drylands in East Africa still make significant contributions to national economies despite chronic underinvestment. Argument 2 illustrates how effective pastoralism is a rational use of the drylands, which maintains livelihoods, provides food, benefits the ecosystem and significantly contributes to national economies. Argument 3 emphasises how pastoralist livestock-keeping has unique adaptive potential to climate change, presents
climate projections for the region along with the implications
of climate change for different land uses, highlights the
importance of climate foresight to enable adaptation, and
presents the key areas of intervention which would allow
pastoralists to auto-nomously adapt to increasingly variable
climate.