Award Abstract # 1533552
Collaborative Research: Event Ecology and Extreme Events as Transformative Factors in Pastoral Social-Ecological Systems

NSF Org: BCS
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Recipient: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
Initial Amendment Date: August 14, 2015
Latest Amendment Date: December 21, 2015
Award Number: 1533552
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Jeffrey Mantz
jmantz@nsf.gov
 (703)292-7783
BCS
 Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
SBE
 Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date: September 1, 2015
End Date: August 31, 2020 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $275,191.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $275,191.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2015 = $275,191.00
History of Investigator:
  • James McCabe (Principal Investigator)
    tmccabe@Colorado.edu
  • Alicia Davis (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Colorado at Boulder
3100 MARINE ST
Boulder
CO  US  80309-0001
(303)492-6221
Sponsor Congressional District: 02
Primary Place of Performance: University of Colorado Boulder
3100 Marine Street, Room 481
Boulder
CO  US  80303-1058
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
02
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): SPVKK1RC2MZ3
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Geography and Spatial Sciences,
Cultural Anthropology
Primary Program Source: 01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1352, 1390, 9278, EGCH
Program Element Code(s): 135200, 139000
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.075

ABSTRACT

Extreme events, such as severe droughts, flooding, and disease epidemics, are known to result in major social, economic, political, and environmental transformations. The effects may include new constraints on land use and livelihood patterns, altered access to crucial resources, impacts on biodiversity, and long term public health problems. Cumulatively, there are often far-reaching consequences for local and national economies. However, outcomes vary from case to case and surprisingly little is known about why some extreme events result in societal transformation while others of similar magnitude do not. In this project, a team of anthropologists asks the question: Under what conditions do transformations occur as a result of an extreme event?

This research focuses on the response of Maasai communities in northern Tanzania to the devastating drought of 2008-2009. The local people claim this drought to be the worst in living memory, stimulating massive migration of livestock and people from southern Kenya and northern Tanzania into neighboring areas in northern Tanzania, with dramatic loss of livestock. The drought was followed by significant changes in land use and traditional institutions and practices, including previously unseen restrictions on who is allowed access to the crucial resources of water and pasture. The researchers will probe why these transformative responses occurred during and following this particular drought but not following previous droughts in recent decades that were equally or more severe. The research will entail ethnographic fieldwork and surveys involving households and village leaders in Maasai villages that were on both the sending and receiving ends of the migration during the drought. The research is designed to reveal how and why responses to the recent drought differed from the past; how the impact of the drought proceeded through a series of phases; and how experiences, decisions, and innovations in one area influenced other areas and, ultimately, the social-ecological system as a whole. The investigators have done research in this area since the mid-1990s and thus have a deep understanding of and detailed baseline data on traditional livelihood patterns and past responses to crises, as well as relationships with local communities that will help ensure accurate assessment of how and why people responded to the drought as they did and what the implications of changing local practices are likely to be. Understanding the responses to extreme events in this case where the situation is well understood and the local-level processes can be identified and followed over time and space will have a direct bearing on planning efforts to cope with the effects of future climatic events and other problems wherever they may occur.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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McCabe, J. Terrence, Leslie, Paul, Davis Alicia "The Emergence of theVillage and the Transformation of Traditional Institutions: A Case Study from Northern Tanzania" Human Organization , v.79 , 2020 , p.150

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The intellectual merit of this project was the advancement of our understanding of how and why some extreme events catalyze transformations of social and ecological systems across scales in the rangelands of Eastern Africa.  This research helped clarify how and why households, sub-villages, and villages responded differently from each other to an extreme recent drought. We were able to examine how households and their livestock migrated during the 2008/09 drought -- when people and livestock migrated, the routes they took, and their final destination. We were also able to examine how the timing and final destination of that migration affected livestock mortality and household sustainability. By focusing on the 2008/09 drought and the 2016/17 drought we were able to look at how one drought prepared households to respond more effectively to a future drought. We were able to trace the events, beginning in 1968, that led to transformation of the governance of natural resources from traditional informal institutions to formal village-based institutions. The transformations in the governance of natural resources at the village level have led to further fragmentation of the social/ecological system of the rangeland in northern Tanzania and could lead to a loss of resilience to future extreme events.

 

The broader impacts included presentations at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology, and invited presentations at Texas A & M University, Cornell University, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The training of project research assistants improved their livelihood options, and feedback presentations in the study villages helped village leaders and household decision makers evaluate the impact of their choices in coping with drought and preparing for future adverse conditions. The potential loss of resilience due to increased fragmentation of the northern Tanzanian rangelands has important implications for policy. Publications so far include a chapter on drought that appeared in the book The Angry Earth edited by Oliver-Smith and Hoffman (Routledge 2020), and a journal article that appeared in the summer 2020 edition of Human Organization.


Last Modified: 12/16/2020
Modified by: J. Terrence Mccabe

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