Building resilience to natural disasters among Borana pastoralists

The paper “Building resilience through social capital as a counter-measure to natural disasters in Africa: a case study from a project in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities in Borena, in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia” by Go Shimada and Miki Motomura, published in African Study Monographs, Suppl. 53: 35–51 (March 2017), attempts to make a quantitative analysis of the economic impact of natural disasters on pastoralists. It examines a Japanese-funded project in Borena in Oromia Region of Ethiopia, which set out to explore options for building resilience as a counter measure to natural disasters. It fould that the number of natural disasters – above all, serious drought – in Africa has rapidly increased since the 1990s, especially in East Africa. These have decreased forested areas and decreased the number of livestock. Pastoralists have been hit particularly hard. The findings indicate that regions at risk from natural disasters need to build resilience through social capital.

Posted on 5 August 2017 in Pastoralism & Climate Change