Ton Dietz

Climate change, violent conflict and local institutions in Kenya's drylands

Many regions that are endowed with scarce natural resources such as arable land and water, and which are remote from a central government, suffer from violence and ethnic strife. A number of studies have looked at the convergence of economic, political and ecological marginality in several African countries. However, there is limited empirical study on the role of violence in pastoral livelihoods across ecological and geographical locations. Yet, case studies focusing on livelihood and poverty issues could inform us about violent behaviour as collective action or as individual decisions, and to what extent such decisions are informed or explained by specific climatic conditions. Several case studies point out that violence is indeed an enacted behaviour, rooted in culture and an accepted form of interaction. This article critically discusses the relevance of geographical and climatic parameters in explaining the connection between poverty and violent conflicts in Kenya’s pastoral areas. These issues are considered vis-à-vis the role institutional arrangements play in preventing violent conflict over natural resources from occurring or getting out of hand. The article uses long-term historical data, archival information and a number of fieldwork sources. The results indicate that the context of violence does not deny its agency in explanation of conflicts, but the institutional set-up may ultimately explain the occurrence of the resource curse.

Migration and environment in Ghana: a cross-district analysis of human mobility and vegetation dynamics

Migration—environment linkages are at the centre of media attention because of public concern about climate change and a perceived “flooding” of migrants from less developed countries into more affluent parts of the world. In the past few years, a substantial body of conceptual literature about environmentally induced migration has evolved, but there is still a paucity of empirical work in this area. Moreover, the environmental causes of migration have been studied largely in isolation of the environmental consequences. In this paper we present an analysis of migration and vegetation dynamics for one country (Ghana) to assess four migration—environment linkages. On the one hand, we look at two environmental drivers of migration: environmental push and pull. On the other hand, we look at the environmental impact of migration on source and destination areas. Census data at the district level (N=110) are used to map domestic migration flows in Ghana, which are then related to vegetation dynamics retrieved from a remotely sensed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset (1981— 2006). The analysis shows that at the national level, there are significant but weak correlations between migration and vegetation cover and trends therein. Districts with a migration deficit (more out-migration than in-migration) tend to be more sparsely vegetated and have experienced a more positive NDVI trend over the past quarter century than districts with a migration surplus. A disaggregation of data in three principle migration systems shows stronger correlations. Namely that north—south migration and cocoa frontier settlement have important environmental dimensions, but environmental factors do not seem to play a major role in migration to the capital, Accra. An important insight from this paper is that migration flows in Ghana can be explained partly by vegetation dynamics but are also strongly related to rural population densities. This is because access to natural resources is often more important than the scarcity or abundance of natural resources per se. This study further shows that satellite remote sensing can provide valuable input to analyses of migration—environment linkages.

Climate and livelihood change in North East Ghana

The case study area of North-east Ghana consists of a densely populated zone in Upper East Region and a less densely populated area in Northern Region. It was selected as an example of a rural area with sub-humid conditions, a relatively high average population density and relatively severe land degradation. A major part of the chapter describes the lack of consistency between rainfall data and crop yield data and tries to explain farmers’ behaviour as a constant adaptation to the rainfall situation, embedded in a volatile socio-economic environment. Farmers acknowledge climate change, and they, government institutions and non-governmental agencies have responded with more emphasis on water provision and land management improvements and with more emphasis on sector and geographical differentiation, including much more reliance on migration and remittance income.

A Literature Survey About Risk and Vulnerability in Drylands, with a Focus on the Sahel

While focusing on recent scientific literature about the Sahel, we present an overview of conceptual advances in understanding risk and vulnerability in dryland societies. The unreliability of rainfall and the seasonality of rainfall, agricultural activities and economic and social life as a whole have created the necessity to cope with vulnerability and stress. A central concept to understanding vulnerability is entitlement, but this is combined with insights from the empowerment approach, the political ecology approach, human ecology and political economy, creating a ‘causal structure of vulnerability’. However, people’s responses can be very different, based on different sensitivity and resilience. Incorporating concepts like insurance strategies, coping strategies and adaptation, a conceptual framework of farm household vulnerability is presented which can be used as a tool to study dryland societies like the ones in West Africa. Those who wish to predict climate change can learn from recent experiences in the region during adverse years, which experiences were the basis for most of the studies reviewed in this chapter.

Dimensions of vulnerability of livelihoods in less-favoured areas: Interplay between the individual and the collective

The geographical concentration of persistent poverty in so-called less-favoured areas (LFAs) calls for a critical look at the link between poverty and environment. Livelihood studies tend to focus on poverty at the individual level, whereas the concept of LFA implies a problem for the collective. Studies on vulnerability tend to be biased towards external ecological causes at the regional level, while studies on coping and survival usually focus on the household. However, recent insights into the internal and external dimensions of livelihood vulnerability in LFAs provide an argument for linking both dimensions to dynamics at the individual and collective level. At an aggregate level, individual and household responses to vulnerability lead to intended and unintended effects, while there is also evidence of collective responses to factors originating from the external vulnerability context. These linkages between the external and internal dimensions of vulnerability and responses at the individual, aggregate and collective level should be studied to understand and mitigate current trends of increasing vulnerability of livelihoods in LFAs. Emerging key issues include: (i) analysis of change; (ii) analysis of livelihood pathways; (iii) aggregate consequences of behaviour; and (iv) cultural dynamics.

Sahelian Livelihoods on the Rebound

In this chapter an attempt is made to find statistical relations between rainfall, yield levels and the drought index. For the whole of the study region, average yield data was compared with average annual rainfall as derived from Meteorological services databases. Data from all available rainfall stations within such a study region was included to generate this simple average rainfall figure. Two drought indices were added to the analysis. No clear relation could be determined.

Participatory Assessment of Development Interventions: Lessons Learned from a New Evaluation Methodology in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

This article presents the principles and findings of developing a new participatory assessment of development (PADev) evaluation approach that was codesigned with Dutch nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and northern and southern research institutes over a period of 4 years in the context of rural development in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Although participatory approaches in development evaluations have become widely accepted since the 1990s, the PADev approach is different by taking the principles of holism and local knowledge as starting points for its methodological elaboration. The PADev approach is found to have an added value for assessing the differentiated effects of development interventions across different subgroups in a community through intersubjectivity. Moreover, if PADev is taken up by a multitude of stakeholders, including the intended beneficiaries of development interventions and development stakeholders, it can contribute to a process of local history writing, knowledge sharing, capacity development, and providing input into community action plans and the strategies of community-based organizations and NGOs.

Not the Usual Suspects: Environmental Impacts of Migration in Ghana’s Forest-Savanna Transition Zone

LANDSAT images published by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) reveal large-scale land degradation in Ghana’s forest-savanna transition zone, most of which has allegedly occurred in a prime settlement area for migrant farmers from Northwest Ghana—the “usual suspects.” Several studies attribute environmental degradation in this region to the unsustainable farm practices of immigrants, most of whom belong to the Dagaba ethnic group. This section uses several lines of evidence at different scale levels to challenge these studies. First, UNEP’s LANDSAT images overstate the extent of the degradation. Second, most land degradation took place before the arrival of migrants from northwest Ghana. Third, previous studies blaming migrants for land degradation neglect key drivers of land cover change in the region. And fourth, primary data show that migrants’ farm practices are different, but not more degrading than those of native farmers.