Pastoralism in Africa
Pastoralism in Africa

Author: Michael Bollig

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 0857459090

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Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the southwest and northeast regions. Unraveling the complex prehistory, history, and contemporary political ecology of African pastoralism, results in insight into the ingenuity and flexibility of historical and contemporary herders.

Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa
Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa

Author: Yanda, Pius Zebhe

Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers

Published: 2018-08-03

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9987753922

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Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa provides systematic and robust empirical investigations on the impact of climate change on pastoral production systems, as well as participating in the ongoing debate over the efficacy of traditional pastoralism. This book is an initial product of the Project Building Knowledge to Support Climate Change Adaptation for Pastoralist Communities in East Africa implemented by the Centre for Climate Change Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam with support from the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa. Traditional pastoralism has proved to be a resilient and unique system of adaptations in a dynamic process of unpredictable climatic variability and continuous human interactions with the natural environment in dryland ecosystems. Pastoral adaptations and climate-induced innovative coping mechanisms have strategically been embedded in the indigenous social structures and resource management value systems. Pastoral livelihoods have, nevertheless, become increasingly vulnerable to climate change impacts as a result of prolonged marginalization and harmful external interventions. The negative effect of global climate change has been an added dimension to the already prevailing crisis in the pastoral livelihood system, which is substantially driven by non-climatic factors of internal and external pressures of change such as population growth, bad governance and shrinking rangelands lost to competing activities.

Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Pastoralist Women in Sub-Saharan Africa
Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Pastoralist Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Author: Melese Getu

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9970252364

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The term climate change is used to denote any significant but extended change in the measures of climate. The changes could be due to natural variability or as a result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy, deforestation, industrial processes, and some agricultural practices. Such activities release large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that hang like a blanket around the earth, thus trapping energy in the atmosphere and causing it to warm up. This results increasingly in climate variability, which is characterised by extreme seasonal, annual, temporal and non-spatial variability in temperature, vagaries of precipitation (rainfall patterns and amounts) and/or wind patterns occurring over a prolonged period of time. The last decade (2001 - 2010) has been the warmest on record; with the average temperatures reaching 0.46∞C, above the 1961 - 1990 mean, and 0.21∞C warmer than the 1991 - 2000 period. It has been proved that the African continent is warming up faster, all year-round, than the global avera≥ a trend that is likely to continue. By the year 2100, it is predicted that temperature changes will fall into ranges of about 1.4∞C to nearly 5.8∞C increase in mean surface temperature compared to 1990, and the mean sea level will rise between 10cm to 90 cm (AMCEN 2011). The interior of semiarid margins of the Sahara and central southern Africa will be the most affected by such warming (AMCEN 2011). To tackle the phenomenon of climate change effectively, human societies have put in place a combination of mitigation and adaptation mechanisms and strategies. Whereas mitigation aims at avoiding or lessening the impacts of the unmanageable, the goal of adaptation is to manage the unavoidable. That men and women are affected differently by climate change suggests that they also differ in terms of the adaptation mechanisms they employ. Despite the existence of gender-based differences in the effects of climate change and in adaptation and coping strategies, studies on the gender differential impacts of climate change and variability on women in general and pastoralist women in particular in sub-Saharan Africa are limited. This volume offers insights and knowledge that pastoralist women developed on climate change adaptation through their experiences in their households and communities and thereby tries to narrow this gap.

Grazing Management and Pastoralists Perception on Rangeland Resource
Grazing Management and Pastoralists Perception on Rangeland Resource

Author: Teshome Beza

Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing

Published: 2013-01

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9783838371153

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Pastoralism is the most dominant land use form in the arid rangelands of Sub-Saharan Africa In Ethiopia, rangelands cover about 61 to 65% of the total area of the country and are home to 12%-15% of the human population, and 26% of the total livestock population. Many of these rangelands and rangeland based lifestyle are degrading owing natural and human-induced factors. This implies that rehabilitation is a matter of priorities and should follow by a detailed assessment of the state of health of the rangelands. In most parts of Ethiopia, the indigenous knowledge of pastoralists is not adequately documented. This work was initiated to document the traditional rangeland resources utilization practices and evaluate rangeland condition.Both the household and vegetation studies confirmed that the current rangeland condition has deteriorated and highly affected by the recurrent drought, overgrazing, and bush encroachment.To sustain the pastoral production system in the district, the current condition of communal rangeland should be reversed through rangeland rehabilitation.This book has documented indigenous which is important for researcher, government & non-government organizations

Pastoralism in the New Millenium
Pastoralism in the New Millenium

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 9789251046739

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Pastoralism refers to the type of farming system which uses extensive grazing on grasslands for livestock production. This type of farming covers 25 per cent of the world's land area and supports 20 million households. It makes substantial contributions to the economies of developing countries, although agricultural encroachment, conflict and drought continue to erode this way of life. This publication considers key policy issues and trends involved in attempts to improve the livelihoods of pastoralist families and communities.

Staying Maasai?
Staying Maasai?

Author: Katherine Homewood

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-02-08

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 0387874925

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The area of eastern Africa, which includes Tanzania and Kenya, is known for its savannas, wildlife and tribal peoples. Alongside these iconic images lie concerns about environmental degradation, declining wildlife populations, and about worsening poverty of pastoral peoples. East Africa presents in microcosm the paradox so widely seen across sub Saharan Africa, where the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations live alongside some of the world’s most outstanding biodiversity resources. Over the last decade or so, community conservation has emerged as a way out of poverty and environmental problems for these rural populations, focusing on the sustainable use of wildlife to generate income that could underpin equally sustainable development. Given the enduring interest in East African wildlife, and the very large tourist income it generates, these communities and ecosystems seem a natural case for green development based on community conservation. This volume is focused on the livelihoods of the Maasai in two different countries - Kenya and Tanzania. This cross-border comparative analysis looks at what people do, why they choose to do it, with what success and with what implications for wildlife. The comparative approach makes it possible to unpack the interaction of conservation and development, to identify the main drivers of livelihoods change and the main outcomes of wildlife conservation or other land use policies, while controlling for confounding factors in these semi-arid and perennially variable systems. This synthesis draws out lessons about the successes and failures of community conservation-based approach to development in Maasailand under different national political and economic contexts and different local social and historical particularities.