Managing
Scarcity
Abstract
Ahmed
, Abdel Ghaffar M.(ed)
Abdel-Ati, Hassan A. (ed)
Managing Scarcity: Human adaptation in East African drylands. Proceedings of a
regional workshop.
Regional
workshop on managing scarcity: Human Adaptation in African Drylands, Addis Ababa
(Ethiopia), 24-26 August 1995.
Compilation
of papers presented at a regional workshop on adaptive strategies, coping
mechanisms and survival strategies of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists who
inhabit the drylands of East Africa to the harsh environment as well as internal
disturbances and external pressures that they face. These papers address issues
such as whether the common characteristics and trends seen among these
pastoralists warrant common approaches and methods of research to allow a
comparative view and, consequently, generalization about the whole region;
conditions influencing the process of change in pastoralism and factors behind
it; internal dynamics of the reproduction of the pastoral society and its
property; complementarity of pastoralism and agriculture; and access to
political power by pastoralists and its beneficial effects. The major
conclusions of the deliberations are: drought is a recurrent reality to which
pastoralists have developed various forms and means of adaptation; indigenous
techniques and coping mechanisms have
been developed in the process of adaptation
and there is a need to reconsider the value of, and possibly develop techniques
based on these indigenous knowledge; the process of change among pastoralists is
not only a function of local physical conditions (e.g., range status, quality of
animals, drought, etc.) but also a result of their interaction with and/or
encroachment by external systems; and there are common trends of change in
pastoral communities whose main features include the shift from large to small
stock, change from nomadic migration to transhumance mobility, and engagement in
other activities as secondary income sources, as short term survival strategies
or as means of temporary adaptation while combining pastoralism with sedentary
agriculture or total departure from pastoralism by means of education or joining
the urban labour market are adopted as long, mechanisms of adaptation. The
papers are titled: "Human adaptation in East African drylands: The dilemma
of concepts and approaches", "From adaptation to marginalization: The
political ecology of subsistence crisis among the Hadendawa pastoralists of
eastern Sudan", "External pressures on indigenous resource management
systems: a case from the Red Sea area, eastern Swan", "Agriculture and
pastoralism in Karamoja: Competing or complementary forms of resource use",
"Management of aridity: Water conservation and procurement in Dar Hamar,
western Sudan", "Subsistence economy, environmental awareness and
resource management in Um Kaddad province, Northern Darfur state",
"Economic strategies of diversification among the sedentary Afar of Wahdes,
north' eastern Ethiopia", "Management of scarce resources: Dryland
pastoralism among the Zaghwa of Chad and the crisis of the Eighties",
"Resource management in the Eritrean drylands: Case studies from the
central highlands and eastern lowlands", "Survival strategies in the
Ethiopian drylands: The case of the Afar pastoralists of the Awash valley",
"State policy and pastoral production systems: The integrated land use plan
of Rawashda Forest, eastern Sudan", "The importance of forest
resources management in eastern Sudan: The case of EI Rawashda and Wad Kabo
forest reserves", "Land tenure and pastoral planning in the Red Sea
Hills", "Range management in the Sudan: An overview of the role of the
State", "What if the pastoralists chose not to be pastoralists? The
pursuit of education and settled life by the Hadendawa of the Red Sea Hills,
Sudan", "Property and social relations in Turkana", and "'Do
give us children': The problem of fertility among the pastoral Barbayiig of
Tanzania",