Reducing vulnerability

Aim 1, Practical Action East Africa

Programme aim 1: To strengthen the ability of poor women and men to use technology to cope with threats to their livelihoods from natural disasters, environmental degradation and civil conflict.

Aim 1 in Karamoja and Somali Clusters Practical Action worked with pastoral communities in the past year to build on their skills and knowledge to use appropriate technologies to develop more secure livelihoods. Such skills are as expected to help them cope with current risks and adapt successfully to meet future challenges.

The cause

Northern Kenya is a vast arid and semi-arid area. It extends from the foothills of Mount Kenya in the north, to the arid lands of southern Ethiopia and Sudan. The area is populated by pastoralist groups mainly of Somali and Karamoja descent who share common languages, cultures and way of life.

Rainfall in the area is minimal and unpredictable, making crop agriculture an unreliable subsistence strategy. To survive, pastoralists have evolved management strategies that are tuned to the realities of their environment. Recent studies have demonstrated such strategies are more efficient than "modern" approaches to resource utilization in these environments.

In this regard Practical Action has come up with the following approaches:

• Strengthening the ways through which people who live in fragile environments cope with environmental degradation that threatens their livelihoods. This is through facilitating them assess risks and find ways of coping through development of appropriate skills;
• Preventing and managing conflicts over scarce natural resources and competition over common property resources and
• Improving the livelihoods of society’s most disadvantaged groups through working at all levels from local to international to have a bigger impact on the policies that affect vulnerable people and by working directly with the locals as well as partners to share our work and reach out to more deserving people.
  

Drought in Kenya September 2009
In Kenya, the humanitarian consequences of drought are worsening as the impacts on food production, water and energy availability bite deeper. Although there are no tallies of deaths among affected populations, the Kenyan government has reported that at least 10 million Kenyans are at risk and need emergency food aid.