Executive Summary
The pathways through which climate and conflict factors are manifested, are determined by the local interplay of exposure to climatic hazards, vulnerability, and the coping capacity of states and communities.
As climate change increasingly impacts the Horn of Africa, it is critical to identify and mitigate climate security risks at sub-regional, national, and local levels. This requires improved knowledge of potentially impactful adaptations that are showing positive results. The goal of this assignment was to fill a current gap in identifying interdisciplinary programmatic solutions at the local level that are already addressing the interlinked nature of climate, peace, and security in the various parts of the Horn of Africa.
The study had twin aims: firstly, to identify how communities are experiencing climate change. Secondly, where possible, to identify and map integrated community level climate security solutions to these risks. Given the community level focus, the study focused on the human security implications of various climate security threats and their responses to address the risks.
SITE SELECTION WAS DETERMINED BY THREE MAJOR OVERLAPPING CRITERIA FOR EACH LOCATION:
(i) Experience of climate variability and extremes.
(ii) Representative of different livelihood systems. E.g., pastoralism, agriculture and fisheries,
(iii) and experience and vulnerability to conflict. The final study locations selected included:
ETHIOPIA
Gambella and South Omo
KENYA
Laikipia, Marsabit and the Coastal region
UGANDA
The Karamoja
For the purposes of the assignment a climate security adaptation has been defined as:
Initiatives to mitigate, prevent and/or address climate security risks.
In turn, climate security is considered as:
Human security and community conflict risks induced or affected, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patterns and their interactions with environmental impacts, socio-economic fragility and other macro contextual trends.
The findings and conclusions from the study demonstrate that the challenges facing all stakeholders in addressing climate security are severe in terms of the speed of change that is now being experienced by communities. In addition, the conflation of challenges that arise from the macro trends (such as population and environmental impacts) affecting the different localities visited, in conjunction with climate change, compounds the challenges being faced by communities on the ground. There are, however, ongoing efforts and approaches being adopted by the government and civil society actors at community level which show some promise in their locality, can be built on and developed further. An interesting finding was that all of the different adaptations that were identified had all been introduced either by civil society and NGOs or by government. Adaptations (aside from negative coping mechanisms) that were solely community-devised, home-grown and initiated were not encountered in any of the locations researched. This emphasises the importance of mutual learning and application of ideas from other similar environments.
It is important to note that all of the areas selected for research are located within existing conflict systems and ongoing conflict dynamics, and in the case of the Karamoja, a cross-border conflict system. This has affected the breadth with which potential climate security adaptations have been interpreted. UNDP/CSM differentiates between a focus on climate change adaptations (adaptation and mitigation) and climate security adaptations with the latter specifically focusing on peace and security. However, in the majority of areas visited, the distinction appears somewhat artificial as changes in any of the key dimensions (environment, governance, macro trends, and resilience) can all potentially affect the existing conflict dynamics or indeed induce new conflicts. In this sense the categorisation of adaptations rather represents a hierarchy of approaches to climate security adaptation. This ranges from the most comprehensive and potentially successful to those that are important but are addressing dimensions least likely to affect conflict directly (but still do address other elements of broader human security) in terms of integrating the key dimensions to prevent or address conflict. Thus, for example, the fourth category of resilience strengthening looks to maximise livelihood and food security given changing weather patterns. This category may not appear to influence climate security and conflict dynamics directly. However, food security, for example, is currently a critical factor in the Karamoja playing into and affecting both intercommunity conflict dynamics and as criminal activity. Young men are engaging in raids on kraals to steal household livestock and food. Livestock raiding in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities has cultural roots, and was previously clan-based (i.e., between clans within the Karamjong) or inter-tribal (e.g., between a clan of the Karamajong and the Pokot or Turkana), in this context. For a variety of reasons this conflict pattern has changed but contributing factors include unemployment, the loss of pastoralism as a primary livelihood, increasing reliance on household or rainfed agriculture, unpredictable weather and therefore food security.
The mapping identified four major categories of adaptation programming:
1. HOLISTIC APPROACHES TO CLIMATE SECURITY
These adaptations are generally at scale, have an early warning component, address environmental sustainability, attempt to manage or prevent conflict, and have a resilience aspect developing additional livelihoods.
2. GOVERNANCE, PEACEBUILDING AND EARLY WARNING
Some adaptations improved policies and governance mechanisms around resolving conflict issues, protecting, managing access, and regulating use of ‘the commons,’ and natural resources, or preventative early warning systems for conflict or disaster risk reduction. Some community examples include resource sharing agreements, by-laws around cutting trees, and codes of conduct for transhumance and migration.
3. ENVIRONMENTAL REHABILITATION AND ENHANCEMENT
Recognising that the environment is being rapidly degraded for a variety of reasons, including both climate change impacts and also trends linked to resource extraction and development, both government agencies and NGOs are undertaking rehabilitation work. Examples such as reforestation, mangrove restoration, rehabilitating rangelands, and others that may overlap with conservation options too, like the use of ‘tengefus’ in the coastal region that provide ‘reservoirs’ of marine species and opportunities to try and restore degraded reefs.
4. RESILIENCE STRENGTHENING
Community resilience building adaptations focus on livelihood dimensions affected by climate and environment change, first and foremost. For example, in an effort to strengthen agricultural productivity communities are adopting more drought tolerant and faster growing crops, adding value to them postproduction, or linkages to better markets in addition to other adaptations. Many adaptations also attempt to diversify community sources of livelihoods and find, or develop, complementary sources of income to reduce household and community vulnerabilities.