Resilience in the rangelands? Responses to change in the Amboseli social-ecological system of Kenya.

Over the past century arid and semi-arid systems have been undergoing an accelerating process of change. Rapidly shifting land-use is leading to fragmentation of rangelands, driven by socio-economic factors including population growth, globalisation, competition for land, tourism, intensification of production and political pressures. Increased climate variability and frequency of extreme weather events adds a further layer of complexity. The Amboseli system exemplifies the multiple stressors facing communities in these semi-arid contexts. In 2009, the area suffered the most severe drought in 50 years, during which an estimated 85% of livestock was lost to the Maasai pastoralists that inhabit the area. This interdisciplinary research used mixed methods and modelling approaches to investigate the impacts of and responses to this shock, as well as implications for longer-term processes of land-use change and climate change. The key findings of this research show first that the psychological impacts of the 2009 drought have implications for place-identity and cultural norms, both critical aspects of resilience in social-ecological systems. Second, this shock has thrown institutions into tension. In the context of multiple stressors, new power dynamics and shifting worldviews in Amboseli are giving rise to actions that may prove maladaptive in the longer term. Third, the decision-making processes leading to shifts in livelihoods and land use are determined by this multiple stressor context as well as access to resources and access to sources of power and authority. These are important components of resilience in Amboseli. Fourth, climate change and land-use change are likely to interact over the long-term to impact on vegetation structure and function in complex ways that will interplay with the local-scale dynamics described in the previous points to influence the resilience of Amboseli

How Can Local Governance Systems Strengthen Community Resilience? A Social-Ecological Systems Approach

"At their core, donor-funded climate and disaster resilience programmes provide goods and services to help build assets and minimise the impact of shocks and stresses on people's lives and livelihoods. Little is known, however, about the way local risk governance systems and the broader institutional arrangements, in which they are embedded, mediate people’s access to these services and therefore lead to improved resilience. Drawing on Social-Ecological Systems theory, we explore those characteristics of risk governance systems believed to be more favourable for building resilience at the community level in different developing country contexts. These include: diversity; polycentricism and connectivity; decentralisation and flexibility; participation and community engagement; and, learning and innovation. This review paper proposes a conceptual framework and assesses the evidence linking risk governance and access to the services needed to build resilient outcomes, drawing particularly on evidence from the Sahel and Horn of Africa. In doing so, we can start to understand where the entry points might be for strengthening resilience and the conditions needed for community-level initiatives to be brought to scale from the bottom up." (author's abstract

Promoting the use of climate information to achieve long-term development objectives in sub-Saharan Africa: Results from the Future Climate For Africa scoping phase

While the impacts of climate change are being felt by people and communities now, many of the most severe impacts will be felt in the decades to come. This presents significant barriers to achieving long-term development objectives – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with low capacity to adapt to the future impacts of climate change. Factoring medium- to long-term climate information into investments and planning decisions is therefore an important component of climate-resilient development. We know little about how climate information is used in Africa to make decisions with long-term consequences, or how effective it is. We know even less about the barriers to – and opportunities for – using climate information in decision-making. How, then, should governments, businesses and donors strive for climate information to achieve Africa’s long-term development objectives? The Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) programme explores these questions and seeks to challenge many of the assumptions that underlie them. To guide the programme, six case studies investigated how climate information was being used in decisionmaking in sub-Saharan Africa. These comprised four country case studies: Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and a combined study of Accra, Ghana and Maputo, Mozambique; and two desk-based studies focused on long-lived infrastructure in the ports sector and the large hydropower sector. This report presents the results of the scoping phase

The contribution of ecosystem services to human resilience: a rapid review

Frameworks that link ecosystems services (ES) and human resilience are still nascent. The links between ES and human wellbeing are still not well understood, and links to resilience even less so. The debate around human resilience in itself is still ongoing in the literature. However, there has been a growth in interdisciplinary science around ES and there is growing evidence that ES support human resilience

Pathways to Resilience in Semi-arid Economies (PRISE) CARIAA consortium report February 2014 - November 2018

PRISE (www.prise.odi.org) (2014–2018) was funded through the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) programme, launched by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) in 2013, to fund adaptation research on three ‘hotspots’ of climate vulnerability: glacier-fed rivers, mega-deltas, and semi-arid lands (de Souza et al., 2015). ‘Hotspots’ are defined as areas where a strong climate signal coincides with a large concentration of poor, vulnerable or marginalised people. PRISE developed projects in seven countries with semi-arid regions: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania (until 2015), Pakistan and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (since 2016). CARIAA is also rooted in progressive research for development principles, including knowledge co-creation (Harvey et al., 2017) and transdisciplinarity (Cundill et al., 2018), and this is reflected in the approaches and methodology employed by PRISE.This report summarises: the key thematic, national and global findings and policy recommendations; related engagement activities and stories of impact; the approach taken by the consortium and how it was set up and managed; the monitoring of outcomes; the lessons learned; and next steps for how the research findings and recommendations can be used to inform future programming and the climate adaptation and ‘leave no one behind’ agendas

Research for climate-resilient futures

Value Chain (VC-ARID) tests the hypothesis that there are two pathways for climate-resilient economic development in semi-arid lands. The first is through upgrading key value chains, such as cotton and beef (vertical transformation). The second is through diversification within the sectors or into related tertiary sectors, such as milk or tourism (horizontal transformation). The VC-ARID method considers: characteristics of semi-arid production, vulnerability to climate change risks, ecological and ecosystem conditions, informal and formal chains of production, and gender dimensions of economic activities. The paper describes the process of mapping value chains and how to identify options drawn from the data.UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID

(Re)conceptualising maladaptation in policy and practice : towards an evaluative framework

This work was carried out under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), with financial suport from the UK Government's Department for International Development and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.Building on this conceptuatlisation of maladaptation, we present the groundwork for a framework that can lend itself to qualitative assessment of adaptation strategies and clarify the differences between four distinct types of adaptation outcomes - ranging from optimal adaptation to maladaptation, In our framework, maladaptation is categorised by determining the impact strategies have on climate risk and wellbeing. The framework also assesses the implications for each category through a distributional and temporal lens

Planning for an Uncertain Future: Promoting adaptation to climate change through flexible and forward-looking decision making

The need for decision making that is flexible, forward-looking and able to adapt to the unexpected is clear. One approach for achieving this is 'Flexible and Forward-Looking? Decision Making' (FFDM). But what is it, and how can it be operationalised in practice? This report documents the activities of the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) in seeking to strengthen FFDM among district development actors. It describes research carried out while trialling an innovative and interactive tool to promote FFDM - a 'game-enabled reflection approach' - accompanied by capacity-building activities. ACCRA undertook case studies at the district level in three countries; Uganda, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Building on these three case studies, this report outlines key findings and makes recommendations on how to better support decision making processes for an uncertain future. It does so in view of helping to understand the use of FFDM as well as the effectiveness and limitations of a game-enabled reflection approach.

Cambio climático y pastoreo: efectos directos, repercusiones y adaptación

The authors discuss the main climate change impacts on pastoralist societies, including those on rangelands, livestock and other natural resources, and their extended repercussions on food security, incomes and vulnerability. The impacts of climate change on the rangelands of the globe and on the vulnerability of the people who inhabit them will be severe and diverse, and will require multiple, simultaneous responses. In higher latitudes, the removal of temperature constraints might increase pasture production and livestock productivity, but in tropical arid lands, the impacts are highly location specific, but mostly negative. The authors outline several adaptation options, ranging from implementing new technical practices and diversifying income sources to finding institutional support and introducing new market mechanisms, all of which are pivotal for enhancing the capacity of pastoralists to adapt to climate variability and change. Due to the dynamism of all the changes affecting pastoral societies, strategies that lock pastoral societies into specified development pathways could be maladaptive. Flexible and evolving combinations of practices and policies are the key to successful pastoral adaptation