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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Natural variability and climate extremes in western Kenya
| Panel |
77. Conceptualizing natural hazards, risks and resilience in Africa
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| Paper ID | 213 |
| Author(s) |
Bloemertz, Lena
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Natural variability, climate extremes and social destabilisation provide the background against which uncertainty is increasing in many parts of Africa. “Natural” disasters in Africa mostly comprise droughts, floods or epidemics, they can in many respects be perceived as creeping or slow onset disasters, which are often manifestations of the interrelationship between mankind and nature.
This paper seeks to shed light on the role of floods for the farmers in the Nyando River Basin at the Lake Victoria in Western Kenya. In this region increasing population density and resource degradation as well as the local social crisis due the HIV/AIDS epidemic lead to an increased uncertainty and degrade the population’s ability to adapt to changing conditions.
In order to understand the role of floods and risk in coping with problems of human-environment relations, I want to describe in which way the floods in Western Kenya can be seen as being a disaster and how and why their impact changed. I will then relate this to longer-term changes in vulnerabilities and attitudes of farmers in order to analyse and to try to understand the rationalities of people’s resource use decisions and give some insights into the local reality of environmental degradation, the role of rainfall variability and uncertainty.
The overall goal is to describe and analyse the dynamics in the socio-ecological system in the Lower Nyando Basin. A central point will be the discussion of disasters as a form of uncertainty. Hereby uncertainty will be defined as: the lack of a solid context within which to make rational decisions in a confident manner. Uncertainty develops when a danger (real or imagined) threatens a community. The concept of uncertainty is seen as being central in order to understand the rationalities and livelihood realities of the local communities, especially since the velocity of change and the complexity of interrelated systems are increasing. I also want to try to make it useful for the discussions on vulnerability and resilience.
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