Seeing like the herder : climate change and pastoralists’ knowledge : insights from Turkana herders in Northern Kenya

Abstract

As debates about climate change intensify and call for the attention of an international community rushing to find solutions and remedies to protect our common future, it is of vital importance to pause, take a step back from global meetings, round tables and forecasting metrics, and to ask: what climate features are embedded into local knowledge, in what practices is this knowledge performed, and how does local knowledge account for changes in the climate? This case study explores indigenous knowledge of climate change in drylands, drawing upon ethnographic research among Turkana herders in northern Kenya. It warns against the danger of a univocal and acritical focus on climate change, de-contextualized from local knowledge, practices and performances. It argues that a good starting point for understanding changes in the climate is to incorporate local perceptions into analysis by exploring local meanings of space and time, how people and places relate to each other, and how local knowledge is built, transmitted and, most importantly, changed over time. By taking these elements into account, not only may views of climate change differ to include longer-term and multifactorial explanations, but the views and understandings of local strategies may also acquire a renewed value