Disaggregated Analysis: The Key to Understanding Wellbeing in Kenya in the Context of Food Price Volatility

This article provides a national?level picture of food security and wellbeing in Kenya, focusing on the situation before the 2008 food price crisis, and the period after 2008. The extent and impact of food price changes differ spatially, and households have different ways of trying to respond. The major food price shocks in 2008 and 2011 impacted negatively on wellbeing, but even after 2011 prices continued to rise in most areas. Seasonal price movements also have adverse effects for resource?poor households. Food price rises have a particularly negative impact on the poorest households. Urban slum dwellers are vulnerable given their dependence on market purchases to meet food needs, but most rural households also have high dependence on market purchases. Current social protection programmes are piecemeal and unreliable. The article concludes with proposals on more effective social protection approaches and agricultural programmes which can address problems linked to food price rises

NDVI - eaststm01-03

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the MODIS collection 5 (C5) data (see S1 Text for explanation). Average NDVI values in East Africa in the time span 2001-2010. Data are composed by 72 ten-day overlapping periods (composites), which were distributed in twelve files (eaststm_XX). Here: eaststm01, eaststm02, eaststm0

NDVI - eaststm10-12

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the MODIS collection 5 (C5) data (see S1 Text for explanation). Average NDVI values in East Africa in the time span 2001-2010. Data are composed by 72 ten-day overlapping periods (composites), which were distributed in twelve files (eaststm_XX). Here: eaststm10, eaststm11, eaststm1

NDVI - eaststm04-06

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the MODIS collection 5 (C5) data (see S1 Text for explanation). Average NDVI values in East Africa in the time span 2001-2010. Data are composed by 72 ten-day overlapping periods (composites), which were distributed in twelve files (eaststm_XX). Here: eaststm04, eaststm05, eaststm0

A climate of control: flooding, displacement and planned resettlement in the Lower Zambezi River valley, Mozambique

In recent years, the potential role of planned, internal resettlement as a climate change adaptation measure has been highlighted by national governments and the international policy community. However, in many developing countries, resettlement is a deeply political process that often results in an unequal distribution of costs and benefits amongst relocated persons. This paper examines these tensions in Mozambique, drawing on a case study of flood-affected communities in the Lower Zambezi River valley. It takes a political ecology approach – focusing on discourses of human-environment interaction, as well as the power relationships that are supported by such discourses – to show how a dominant narrative of climate change-induced hazards for small-scale farmers is contributing to their involuntary resettlement to higher-altitude, less fertile areas of land. These forced relocations are buttressed by a series of wider economic and political interests in the Lower Zambezi River region, such dam construction for hydroelectric power generation and the extension of control over rural populations, from which resettled people derive little direct benefit. Rather than engaging with these challenging issues, most international donors present in the country accept the ‘inevitability’ of extreme weather impacts and view resettlement as an unfortunate and, in some cases, necessary step to increase people’s ‘resilience’, thus rationalising the top-down imposition of unpopular social policies. The findings add weight to the argument that a depoliticised interpretation of climate change can deflect attention away from underlying drivers of vulnerability and poverty, as well as obscure the interests of governments that are intent on reordering poor and vulnerable populations