Is drought killing pastoralism?

Around the few deep boreholes dotted across Kenya’s arid empty north, villages of thatched huts are growing by the day. Dozens of families arrive, leading camel trains and herding the few bony cattle they have left, pushed by drought to the vast frontier bordering Somalia and Ethiopia. Tribal lore passed down the generations says the only way for these nomads to survive is to keep moving, from watering hole to river, from one pasture to the next, living off the milk and meat of their livestock. But today, there is no pasture, and two years without rain have erased the watering holes and turned rivers to sand, killing animals in the thousands. Now, these wanderers are being forced to settle near the only permanent water sources available, where the precious resource is drawn from deep wells by diesel-driven boreholes and where more and more people struggle to share a dwindling supply. “We came here 17 years ago when there was another bad time, when we lost all our animals and were left with nothing,” said Jimale Bule, 72, chairman of the council of elders at Alimaow village, three miles outside Wajir, a Kenyan provincial capital 400 miles north of Nairobi. “Now we are still struggling, yet there are more and more people who are coming from the bush to live here. We cannot all live together, there are too many.” Worst of the worst Settling down is not what nomads do. They are battle-hardened to deal with dry spells and even occasional drought, roaming vast distances where average rainfall is just 300 mm a year. But this drought has persisted for two years in Kenya, and four rainy seasons have passed with less than 20 mm falling, according to the country’s meteorological department. “This is the worst period of the worst drought we have ever seen here, and we are so worried we will not live to see the rains come with any of our animals still alive,” said Abdikadr Amin, 50, at the remote borehole at Arbajahan, 60 miles north of Wajir. He had already lost 130 of his 150 cows.

Thousands of cows and sheep have already died across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia and those still struggling on are on the brink of starvation. Herdsmen are resorting to sharing their last food and water with their animals - even feeding them black tea in the hope they will last until rain replenishes pasture and water holes.

In Ethiopia’s southern belt bordering Kenya, the situation is the same, as it is in Somalia’s southwest as well. Indeed, it is wrong to think of this vast dry region as belonging to three different nations - to the groups who live here, political borders mean little. When prolonged dry spells hit, pastoralists employ distress strategies. They move to whatever water there is, even if it is four days and 120 km away. To save their breeding stock and milk animals, they intentionally abort animal foetuses or slaughter calves at birth. Families sell their scant valuable assets - jewellery, a bicycle, spare clothing, a bucket - or pull their children out of school to save fees. Trees struggling to survive the drought are chopped down for firewood, and the limited water found each day is shared between livestock and families. This time, however, they have run out of ideas. Having exhausted every coping mechanism, they trudge to feeding centres and water distribution points, a proud people forced to look for hand-outs. The fate of pastoralism The current situation begs the question of whether nomadic pastoralism can survive in an environment burdened by overpopulation - of both humans and livestock - and global warming. Perhaps roaming communities can be taught to plough and plant, using drought-resistant seeds watered by more boreholes, coaxing rotating harvests of maize, sorghum, beans, cabbage and peas from irrigated terraces fed by water stored up to last through harsh times. It has worked Lokubae and Morulem, two small villages 700 km north of Nairobi, where the charity World Vision began teaching agricultural techniques and water conservation principles a decade ago. Despite fierce early resistance from elders of the Turkana community who live there, the scheme, supported by the United Nations World Food Programme, has flourished to the point where the Turkana last month donated 6.5 metric tonnes of their excess grains to other Kenyans struggling with the drought. "Achieving a level of food security that allows them to donate food to others is amazing," said Timothy Andrews, Kenya country director for World Vision, adding that plans had been drawn up to replicate the programme in other places. Such attempts to switch lifestyles are met with angry disdain elsewhere, however.

Only massive investment by Kenya's government to give herdsmen access to abbattoirs, freezing plants and good roads to market will pull them off the poverty line and allow them to survive lean times like the current drought, which has killed more than half of their animals, says District Pastoralist's Association board member Mohamed Abdi Elni, at Arbajahan village.

“Pastoralism is not an experiment,” snarled Mohamed Abdi Elmi, a board member of the District Pastoralist Association in Wajir, a town that is arguably the epicentre of Kenya’s drought crisis. “It has been here for centuries, and we believe it is here to stay no matter what the development planners say. It is the only way to make use of these arid lands. Farming crops is impossible on a large scale.” Equally, the large-scale settlement of people carries with it inherent problems in this land of little, where conflict over scant resources regularly turns violent and fatal. Drilling more boreholes to sustain greater populations in booming villages or towns drains sub-surface water, which the natural environment can scarcely spare. Diesel to run them costs money and pollutes. Schools are few and often costly. Health infrastructure is weak, and disease outbreaks that occur when too many people live too close together are difficult to contain. “There really is no alternative to pastoralism,” said Daniele Donati, emergency coordinator for Africa for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Changing times, changing minds If nomadic communities are to survive, they must adapt their practices to the increased incidence of drought. Pastoralists, who have too many animals, need to be sensitised to cutting herd sizes, voluntarily and selectively, so the best breeding animals are nurtured and vets have access to immunise them against virulent diseases. Tracts of pasture, plentiful in good seasons, need to be left untouched so that when drought recurs, as it inevitably will, there is food to spare. Existing boreholes must be well maintained and spares procured quickly. The wanton chopping down of trees for firewood must be curbed by introducing alternatives, like “charcoal” made from sustainable forests, more efficient cooking stoves and electric power where feasible. The key to the success - rather than simply the subsistence - of pastoralism in the modern world is for governments to approach nomadic communities as potential contributors to a nation’s economic wealth. With a slaughterhouse, reliable electricity to power a freezing plant, and roads that are passable year-round, there is no reason why pastoralists should not be able to earn well from national and even international markets. “Why can they not build roads to our place, like they build roads to the flower farmers and the tea and coffee farmers or the maize farmers?” asked Ahmed Omar Bare, chairman of Wajir’s District Pastoralist Association. Farm Africa, a British humanitarian organisation, has set up mobile butcheries complete with drying racks, where animals can be slaughtered and their meat properly cured into biltong - a local dried meat. “They just need to be able to get it to a decent market,” said Christie Peacock, chief executive officer of Farm Africa. The effect of putting more money in pastoralists’ pockets is likely to be greater resilience during future lean times, greater spending on education for their children, better healthcare for their families - and fewer pictures of dead animals and dying children when the rains fail next time.