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Oxfam sees
climate change role for E.Africa nomads
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 NAIROBI(August
19,2008) - Pastoralist communities like the Maasai
could offer insights into coping with climate change in East Africa,
but their political marginalisation means valuable knowledge is not
being used, aid agency Oxfam said on Monday.
Skills learned over generations roaming with their herds across the
hot deserts, lush green savannahs and rocky scrublands of Kenya, Uganda
and Tanzania could be of huge value on a continent forecast to be
hit hard by global warming.
But leaders in the region have largely sidelined and ignored them,
sneering at their way of life as outdated and irrelevant.
"All too often the direct economic value generated by pastoralists
is not retained in their communities, and the indirect value is unrewarded
and even unacknowledged by decision-makers," Paul Smith-Lomas,
regional director for Oxfam International, said in a statement.
A new Oxfam report, "Survival of the Fittest", describes
years of marginalisation and inappropriate development policies coupled
with increased competition for resources that has hit some pastoralists'
ability to maintain a sustainable livelihood.
Oxfam said east African governments had mostly excluded such communities
-- who often inhabit remote parts of their territories -- from national
political processes, tending to view them as minority vote that was
not worth winning.
But slowly, Oxfam said, some were realising their value.
Pastoralists have been adapting to climate changes for millennia,
and that should help them cope with the warming forecast for Africa,
said Mohamed Elmi, who was named in April as Kenya's first minister
for the north and other arid lands.
"However, their adaptability cannot be realised without government
support and investment," he said in the statement.
Scientists warn that Africa will be hit hard by global warming, with
the U.N. climate panel predicting a temperature rise of up to 2-4
Celsius by the 2080s.
It forecasts more droughts, storms, floods and rising seas, as well
as changing ranges for diseases. Tens of millions of people across
the continent face food and water shortages.
Oxfam called on governments and development agencies to overhaul their
policies towards pastoralists, who have long used traditional livestock
and land-management strategies to manage drought and flood cycles.
Social welfare systems should be put in place, it said, so they can
continue to pass on the lessons of their traditional lifestyle, or
choose an alternative way of making a living.
"Communities must be at the heart of efforts to build their resilience
to climate change because adaptation is inherently local," Paul
Smith-Lomas said.
"It will only work if local people are leading the process."
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