Abstract
During the 1970s and 80s, terrible Sahelian droughts, viewed as the beginning of regional climate change impacts, devastated pastoralist livelihoods. In Niger, many households left pastoralism; the rest tell how they slowly recovered. In 2009, another severe drought taxed pastoralist households, and at start of the 2010 rainy season, a tremendous storm killed most of their weakened livestock. Pastoralists, constrained by environmental degradation and socioeconomic changes, have few opportunities to build climate change adaptation capacity. Research with a Nigerien Woɗaaɓe community compares post-1984 and post-2010 recovery strategies to show how increased tolerance for certain risks helps some households take advantage of these rare opportunities. Less well-off families and especially women, less able to manage intolerable risks, adapt less easily.
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Notes
- 1.
Boukari, a key informant interviewed in December 2014, male, about 55 years old (m, ~55) in 2014. All names have been changed.
- 2.
Fulɓe: Fulani or Peul; an ethnicity following varied livelihoods present throughout West Africa and beyond. The Woɗaaɓe are primarily nomadic, exclusive pastoralists.
- 3.
The few whom I do not know well were less comfortable and more reticent.
- 4.
Though some success has come through passing the Pastoral Code in 2010.
- 5.
It was difficult to determine whether this had happened post-1984.
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Acknowledgements
The 2014–2015 research was supported by the West African Science Service Center for Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), and the German Ministry of Education.
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Greenough, K.M. (2018). Pastoralists Shifting Strategies and Perceptions of Risk: Post-crisis Recovery in Damergou, Niger. In: Leal Filho, W., Nalau, J. (eds) Limits to Climate Change Adaptation. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64599-5_7
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