Adaptations of Tanzanian Maasai Communities To Climate Change

 

 Tanzanian Maasai and cattle in Ngorongoro Conservation Area

After establishing the vulnerability of East Africa to climate change, and the struggles faced by the inability of climate models to properly represent the region, I wanted to now focus on a more specific impact, from a less top-down view. Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to evolve in order to accommodate environmental hazards or policy change and to expand the range of variability with which it can cope.’ These are different to coping strategies, which could also refer to short-sighted solutions that may exacerbate long-term issues.

While this refers to Kenya Maasai culture, the lifestyle threats to pastoralist culture stands.

The Tanzanian Maasai have many historical methods of adapting to change, which are becoming less effective as they compound over intensifying hydrology and other regional issues.

        Maasai communities are historically pastoralist, semi-nomadic communities who seasonally moved livestock herds, although since the 1970s, institutional pressure has forced most into static villages. Living in a highly variable climatic context, the main management methods for flood and drought involved intercommunity reciprocity, continuous mobility, and resource management. However, increasing privatization and border enforcement has fragmented land, and discouraged or outright prevented this form of adaptation.

 

Drivers, pressures, states, and impacts of climate change on Maasai communities in Tanzania

        The 2009 drought is thought to have set a dangerous privatization precedent. Prior coping techniques were no longer sufficient, as the few that were able to manage the large-scale livestock mortality were only able to do so if they both privatised their wetter pastures, and actively denied others access to them. This has been considered an indicator of climate-driven increase in individualism in Maasai communities, leading to widening sociological inequality. 

        Increasing agricultural reliance and intensification has also been seen in Maasai regions, alongside rotating vegetation types to conserve pastures and diversifying income by selling by-products. However, the sustainability of these strategies are strongly dependent on community-wide planning and effective land utilization.

        Often the natural suggestion to better manage these strategies to mitigate climate effects is increasing institutional and policy intervention. However, these communities have complex relationships with policymakers, especially as wetter areas are increasingly conserved, constraining pastoralist mobility in those regions. It is not unreasonable for them to be wary of accepting livestock management advice from the same voices preventing their traditional mitigation methods from taking effect, especially when it is often not delivered in their language or by people from their culture. 

 

Activists in London place signs outside the Tanzanian High Commission in solidarity

        This is not a paradox I have a solution for. The Tanzanian Maasai are more impacted by climate change, their lifestyle getting less able to cope with coupled climate and land management stressors, and unable to trust policymakers to help manage their adaptation efforts. 

    As I draw near the end of this blog, I find that this only serves to highlight the depth of climate injustice, as not only does the Global South bear the brunt of the North's mistakes, but also that many national climate policies only serve to further marginalise the most vulnerable.