Monday 10/5, 13 - 14.30: Pastorialism and climate adaptation: Insights from ongoing research in Northern Kenya

Lecturer: Per Knutsson

Zoom link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/66218951203?pwd=a0RLeE1CVW1CRWlzMzFReEFmdi92QT09

Meeting ID: 662 1895 1203
Passcode: 310367

Based on insights and experiences from ongoing research in the region, this lecture (will be uploaded below ASAP) tells the story of pastoralist ways of life in East Africa as a historically successful adaptation to the precarious conditions of drylands. However, as the lecture also notes: times are changing. Pastoralist communities are increasingly confronted with the new economic and political realities in the form of commercialization of livestock production, pressures to adapt more sedentary lifestyles, land privatization & fragmentation, expanding resource exploitation, infrastructure expansion, and a rapidly changing institutional landscape.

At the Zoom session 13.15 - 14.30, Per Knutsson will provide a brief summary of the political-ecological dynamics facing pastoralist communities. After this, we will jointly discuss climate risk, vulnerability and adaptation within the context of a changing pastoralist political economy, guided by the following conceptual lenses introduced in the beginning of the course:

- Risk & Resilience (see for example Beck (1992); Boholm & Corvellec (2010); and Folke (2015))

- Contextual vulnerability (see O'Brien et al. (2007))

- Interactions of climate adaptation politics (Eriksen et al. 2015)

Recommended reading:

O’Brien, K., Eriksen, S., Nygaard, L. and Schjolden, A. (2007). Why different interpretations of vulnerability matters in climate change discourses. Climate Policy, 7(1), 73 – 88.

Eriksen, S., Nightingale A. & Eakin, H. (2015). Reframing Adaptation: The Political Nature of Climate Change Adaptation.

Folke, C. (2016). Resilience (Republished). Ecology and Society 21(4):44. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09088-210444

Schilling, J., Locham, R. Weinzierl, T., Vivekananda, J. and Scheffran, J. (2015). The nexus of oil, conflict, and climate change vulnerability of pastoralist communities in northwest Kenya. Earth System Dynamics 6: 703 – 717.

Further information on the research projects mentioned in the lecture:

Aalders, T., Bachmann, J., Knutsson, P. and Kilaka, B (2021). ’The making and unmaking of a megaproject: contesting temporalities along the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya’. Antipode https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12720

The 'Drylands Transform' project

The Triple-L research initiative

The 'PASTRES' program (High profile British program on pastoralism, uncertainty and resilience)