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Beyond Beneficiaries: Conflict and Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in African...
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Beyond Beneficiaries: Conflict and Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in African Drylands

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Air, Climate Change and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2018) | Viewed by 9680

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sebastiaan Soeters

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Utrecht University, Domplein 29, 3512 JE Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: climate change; adaptation; African drylands; pastoralism; agricultural development; conflict
Prof. Dr. Annelies Zoomers

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Human Geography and Planning – International Development Studies, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8a, Room 6.06, 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: land governance; migration; livelihood analysis; impact assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Angela Kronenburg García

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Université catholique de Louvain, Place de l'Université 1, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Interests: natural resource conflict; drylands; land use change; land/forest tenure; leadership; Kenya; land use frontiers; land-based investments; natural resource governance; Mozambique

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,


This Special Issue is born from research conducted as part of a four-year research project on the linkages between adaptation interventions in African drylands on the one hand, and new dynamics of conflict and/or cooperation on the other. The rise of climate change adaptation, as a fundamental development thematic, especially in African drylands, has resulted in new financial flows into programming seeking to strengthen community resilience to climatic change and variability. This includes new dry-season farming initiatives, investments in modern irrigation and storage infrastructure, biodiversity and the introduction of climate smart crop and seed varieties, to name but a few. Invariably, these types of interventions target sedentary farmers, despite the fact that African drylands are characterized by multi-livelihood landscapes, and scarce natural resources form the basis of, not only farming, but also pastoralism, hunting, foraging and fishing livelihoods. In targeting one group of beneficiaries, adaptation interventions work to dedicate natural resources to supporting crop-based livelihoods, often ignoring other groups, equally dependent upon those natural resources. This Special Issue invites contributions that focus on how, in African dryland areas, emerging adaptation regimes impact beyond beneficiary groups, creating new relations in the governance of contested natural resources, and the implications for conflict and/or cooperation.

Prof. Dr. Annelies Zoomers
Dr. Sebastiaan Soeters
Dr. Angela Kronenburg García
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Adaptation interventions
  • conflict
  • cooperation
  • African drylands

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 2850 KiB  
Article
Towards Adaptive Commons: A Case Study of Agro-Pastoral Dams in Northern Ghana
by Ruben Weesie
Sustainability 2019, 11(2), 319; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020319 - 10 Jan 2019
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2762
Abstract
Agro-pastoral dams (APDs) are an increasingly popular method of adaptation interventions improving communal water supply in rural West Africa. However, APDs are often constructed in areas where culturally heterogeneous pastoralists and farmers compete for similar land and water resources. Lifting open access water [...] Read more.
Agro-pastoral dams (APDs) are an increasingly popular method of adaptation interventions improving communal water supply in rural West Africa. However, APDs are often constructed in areas where culturally heterogeneous pastoralists and farmers compete for similar land and water resources. Lifting open access water abundance is likely to change if not intensify ongoing tensions between farmers and settling Fulani herders. The extent of collective action and inclusivity of 6 APDs in Northern Ghana are analysed, combining theory from common-pool resource management and equity and justice in climate change adaptation into a proposed Inclusive Collective Action (ICA) model. Practically, the article demonstrates that neither fully excluding Fulani pastoralists nor making dams openly accessible results in inclusive APD usage and management where collective action is successful, and more dynamic forms of regional inclusion and exclusion are needed. Theoretically, the article identifies some of the limitations of applying the enabling conditions for collective action of common-pool resource theory as it tends to overlook negative aspects of excluding certain user groups in culturally heterogeneous contexts from managing and using a commons. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond Beneficiaries: Conflict and Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in African Drylands)
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21 pages, 2120 KiB  
Article
From Herding to Farming under Adaptation Interventions in Southern Kenya: A Critical Perspective
by Ruben Weesie and Angela Kronenburg García
Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4386; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124386 - 23 Nov 2018
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2960
Abstract
Improving water supply for irrigable farming and livestock purposes in communities in Africa is an increasingly popular approach for community-based adaptation interventions. A widespread intervention is the construction of agro-pastoral dams and irrigation schemes in traditionally pastoral communities that face a drying climate. [...] Read more.
Improving water supply for irrigable farming and livestock purposes in communities in Africa is an increasingly popular approach for community-based adaptation interventions. A widespread intervention is the construction of agro-pastoral dams and irrigation schemes in traditionally pastoral communities that face a drying climate. Taking the Maji Moto Maasai community in southern Kenya as a case study, this article demonstrates that water access inequality can lead to a breakdown of pre-existing social capital and former pastoral cooperative structures within a community. When such interventions trigger new water uses, such as farming in former pastoral landscapes, there are no traditional customary institutional structures in place to manage the new water resource. The resulting easily corruptible local water management institutions are a main consolidator of water access inequalities for intervention beneficiaries, where socio-economic standing often determines benefits from interventions. Ultimately, technological adaptation interventions such as agro-pastoral dams may result in tensions and a high fragmentation of adaptive capacity within target communities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond Beneficiaries: Conflict and Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in African Drylands)
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16 pages, 1376 KiB  
Article
Territorial Conflicts, Agency and the Strategic Appropriation of Interventions in Kenya’s Southern Drylands
by Angela Kronenburg García
Sustainability 2018, 10(11), 4156; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114156 - 12 Nov 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3029
Abstract
A number of scholars have noted that interventions, such as development programmes and climate change adaptation projects, that simplify complex social realities and thus lose sight of the relational dynamics beyond the target or beneficiary group, risk contributing to conflict. This article examines [...] Read more.
A number of scholars have noted that interventions, such as development programmes and climate change adaptation projects, that simplify complex social realities and thus lose sight of the relational dynamics beyond the target or beneficiary group, risk contributing to conflict. This article examines how a series of interventions in a particular dryland area in southern Kenya became embroiled in a long-running territorial conflict between the Loita Maasai (the beneficiary community) and their neighbours, the non-beneficiary Purko Maasai. Based on ethnographic research and by taking a historical perspective, it shows how Loita Maasai leaders systematically appropriated these outside interventions, used and reworked them with the strategic aim of stopping land loss to ongoing Purko encroachment. The analysis reveals two ways in which Loita leaders realized this: (a) by using interventions to stake out spatial claims to land; and (b) by capitalizing on the tendency of interventions to simplify local contexts. This article contributes to the debate on the linkages between intervention and conflict by highlighting the agency of intervention beneficiaries and showing that, through their actions, interventions may unwittingly reproduce and even aggravate existing conflicts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond Beneficiaries: Conflict and Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in African Drylands)
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