ABSTRACT
This article investigates how pastoral and agropastoral populations interact in adapting to climate variability and change, particularly to drought. Interactions within trade, livestock and human mobility, and accessing forest resources are critical to local adaptive capacity in Kenya’s drylands. Qualitative interview data collected between 2004 and 2007 in Endau, eastern Kenya, are analysed to explore the role of these interactions in sustainable adaptation, and how they have been affected by formal policies and informal governance. The article also explores how politics, decision making and conflicts interact in practice to shape decision making, and how dominant state orientation may facilitate or constrain sustainable adaptation. We conclude that both official policy and state practice in terms of actual decision making (whether in line with policy and legal frameworks or not) appear to undermine human security in terms of political and social rights, as well as sustainable adaptation in terms of social equity and environmental integrity. Sustainable adaptation for the case of Endau would imply a fundamental change in governance regime from one of imposing punitive measures to stop dynamic interactions to one through which, instead, interactions between the various groups are strengthened.
