Building Pastoralists’ Resilience To Shocks For Sustainable Disaster Risk Mitigation: Lessons From West Pokot County, Kenya

Abstract

Most pastoralists’ in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) are adversely affected by climate-change related shocks such as droughts and livestock diseases. These shocks lead to deterioration of livestock quality and even mass death of herds. This leaves pastoralists vulnerable as they derive most of their food and income needs from livestock, necessitating emergency disaster response and the need to build their long-term adaptive capacity. In most cases however, investments only focus on reducing risks and not on building long-term adaptation strategies. In this study, we analyzed factors affecting household resilience among the pastoralists of West Pokot County in Kenya. A focus group discussion and key informant consultations were held to understand community perspectives on the historical nature of climate-change related shocks. In additional, individual household surveys were done with 191 randomly selected households to obtain information on the shocks experienced by pastoralists, coping strategies, long term adaptation strategies and external support, their uptake of these and the effect on their resilience. The household resilience index was constructed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). An ordered probit regression was used to analyze the effect of socio-demographic, institutional factors and adaptive practices on households’ resilience. It was noted that years of formal schooling, household income, access to credit and extension and adaptive practices such as post harvest use of field crops for grazing, enclosures, stocking improved breeds, bee keeping, ethno-veterinary practices and afforestation have a positive and significant effect in building household resilience to shocks. There is therefore a need to direct investment to bolster pastoralists’ own efforts towards building their resilience.