ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on the complex pastoralist response to environmental and climate changes, focusing on empirical evidence from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. It offers insights into how pastoralist peoples negotiate a changing climate, taking into account the historical, socio-cultural, and political processes in which pastoral communities develop their livelihood strategies.
Pastoralism is a lifestyle and livelihood marked by the shepherding of livestock on open pastures: it is both process and praxis. Pastoral movements are regular and orderly, governed by the seasonal regimes of pasture availability, as well as to the arrangement of different groups on their territories. The predictability and reliability of those regimes are increasingly at threat by climate change. However, while pastoralist groups face serious and mounting challenges to their lifestyle from changing environmental conditions and globalisation, pastoralist societies’ deeply-entrenched flexibility and adaptability prove to be key. This chapter provides a critical look at the ‘pastoralist dropout’ narrative, considers how climate interacts with other drivers of sedentarisation, and argues for a more mainstreamed consideration of pastoralist agency. It considers the political, legal, and normative frameworks governing pastoralist movements and how these could better support adaptive pastoralist mobility.
