Calm amid the crisis: Despite drought, herders and their animals from Somalia and Kenya converge on an Ethiopian watering hole in a systematic order. Photo by Peter Little.

By Carol Clark, Emory University

Emory anthropologist Peter Little was in southern Ethiopia last February, during the height of a major drought that continues to scorch the Horn of Africa. He is researching how climate change is affecting livestock herders in the region [with the Livestock-Climate Change CRSP CHAINS project]. During the past year, drought has killed about 20 percent of the cattle, or about 225,000 animals, within Ethiopia’s Borana pastoralist community.

At a watering hole, Little watched herders bring their animals in from northeastern Kenya and Somalia, where the effects of the drought are compounded by armed conflict. “I was amazed by the skill and discipline of these herders,” Little says. “They got thousands of thirsty animals to line up like schoolchildren. Some of the camels hadn’t had water for seven days.”

First the herders themselves approached the water’s edge with buckets and canteens. Then the goats were sent in an orderly procession to drink, followed by the cattle, and finally the camels.

“We could learn a lot from African pastoralists about how to collectively manage resources,” Little says. He contrasts their cooperative use of extremely limited water supplies to the inter-state battles fought over Atlanta’s Lake Lanier reservoir, and the ever-shrinking Colorado River.

Read more at www.emory/esciencecommons.edu

Related Story: Peter Little, CHAINS Project Leader, on the Drought in the Horn of Africa

Abdille Muhamed with his dead cow in Garse Koftu village, 120km from Wajir in northeastern Kenya. Photo by Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN.

“In the Horn of Africa, droughts are natural but famines are man made,” says Emory anthropologist Peter Little, who studies the politics, economy and ecology of the region and leads the Livestock-Climate Change CRSP CHAINS project. “The famine in Somalia is an unfortunate intersection of failed rain, politics and conflict.”

Drought occurs every five or six years in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, which has lacked the control of a central government over much of the country since a civil war in 1991, the effects of the current drought have been greatly compounded by fighting, Little says.

The U.N. has declared famine in two regions of south Somalia where the Islamist group Al-Shabaab has been fighting to maintain control. “A phenomenal number of people have been displaced,” Little says. “People have been forced out of farming and livestock areas and have clustered around towns where there is a little bit of security.”

Fighting disrupts markets and trading, and complicates delivery of food aid. In an attempt to escape the situation in recent months, more than 350,000 Somalis have poured into northeastern Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, which was designed to hold fewer than 100,000 people.

The CHAINS project’s Garissa District site (in northeastern Kenya) borders southern Somalia and the Dadaab refugee camp.  “From colleagues in Nairobi, it seems that the U.S. Agency for International Development  and  the World Bank probably will be pushing for increased development resources(rather than just relief funds) for the region once the current humanitarian crisis subsides,” Little says.

Read more at www.emory/esciencecommons.edu

Related Story: Peter Little, CHAINS Project Leader, Debunks Pastoralism Myths