Climate change, development, and resilience: a warning from Turkana, Kenya

Climate change, development, and resilience: a warning from Turkana, Kenya"Four old men in traditional clothes sat listening [to a discussion about development in Turkana] with three younger ones murmuring a translation.One of the elders rose to his feet.'Who built this house?' he asked'We are not poor!'He went on to say that some people did indeed come to towns and settle there to obtain access to food relief, and they became separated from the traditional welfare system that still protected the majority.He talked about the wealth of the rangelands, the cattle and camels, sheep and goats...'You say the north of Kenya has a food crisis.But we have the best grazing in a long time and milk is plentiful.Neither are we ignorant', he went on.'This old man here is responsible for the decisions about where to take the camels of an entire clan for water and grazing.Any mistake and the clan loses everything'.He explained that sharing between richer and poorer pastoralists is central to their self-understanding as a society." 1 This rebuttal to the prevailing characterisation of pastoralist communities as destitute and fragile was presented during the Horn of Africa Pastoral Network meeting in Nairobi in 2009 convened by the United States Agency for International Development.The meeting brought together representatives from the Government, development agencies, non-governmental organisations, and a few community members, including representative elders from northern Kenya.Their challenge to the development of the community resonates more than 15 years later.The Turkana people of northern Kenya have thrived in the arid rangelands west of Lake Turkana for centuries.Their familiarity with droughts is so unique that each drought is named to preserve its memory in oral history.The key to their remarkable resilience is their ability to move and adapt to environmental changes.Adaptation is not an individual endeavour-communities use collective strategies to mitigate the impacts of drought and flood, including governance of communal resources and redistribution of animal wealth to maximise survival and recovery.Due to regular migration, much of the region remains without brick-and-mortar infrastructure.Access to health care, electricity, and education is poor.Conventional development strategies intended to address poverty have