GSSC Seminar Series

27 January 2026

Collaborative Research: Response and Resilience Following Compound. Extreme Events in Pastoral Systems with Contrasting Land Management Regimes

 

J. Terrence McCabe (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
 

12:00-13:00

The extensive rangelands of Africa support millions of people and countless wildlife, but the East African rangelands are rapidly changing due to changes in land management and ownership, and the erosion of traditional social institutions. There is also increasing concern with the role of compound extreme events or disasters occurring in close temporal proximity. While the importance of compound disasters is recognized, the field is emerging, understudied, and little is known about how people respond and build resilience to compound disasters. To address this, our research draws on empirical research across three different land management regimes in Maasailand in northern Tanzania -- one where livestock movement is relatively unrestricted (Longido), one with restrictions on livestock movements and greater dependence on agriculture (Simanjiro), and one where the land is managed for wildlife conservation, with restricted agropastoralism (Enduimet Wildlife Management Area). The research asks three critical questions: (1) Impact: How do the responses to and impact of compound disasters in the land management regimes seen in the study area differ from those of disasters considered individually? (2) Resilience: How do compound disasters affect the objective and subjective resilience of households and individuals? (3) Institutions: How do compound disasters affect the social institutions that are critical to households’ and individuals’ ability to both respond to and recover from disasters? To answer these questions, we collected data from men and women in 9 villages utilizing focus group interviews, key informant interviews, and household surveys. My talk touches on all three issues but the focus will be on objective and subjective resilience of households to compound disasters.

J. Terrence McCabe is an ecological anthropologist and have been conducting research on human/environment relationships among pastoral people of East Africa since 1980. First among the Turkana of northern Kenya as part of the South Turkana Ecosystem Project (1980-1996) and among the Maasai of northern Tanzania (1989-present). He has published numerous articles and book chapters and my book: Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies: Turkana Ecology, History, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium System University of Michigan  Press (2004) won the Julian Steward Award for the best book published in environmental anthropology in that year by the American Anthropological Association. In addition, he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 2009, and was elected as a Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020. Much of his research has been conducted as part of multi-disciplinary teams, and recently focused on the impact and response to extreme events, especially drought, as well as and the impact of conservation on local peoples, and how access to cell phones has been incorporated in the daily life of men and woman among the Maasai of Tanzania. He is also currently part of a team conducting research on the impact of climate change and conflict in Kenya.