Climate Change Adaptation in Africa ─ An Historical Ecology

In the context of growing global concerns about climate change, this book presents a regional and sub-continental synthesis of pastoralists' responses to past environmental changes and reflects on the lessons for current and future environmental challenges.

Drawing from rock art, archaeology, paleoecological data, trade, ancient hydrological technology, vegetation, social memory and historical documentation, this book creates detailed reconstructions of past climate change adaptations across Sahelian Africa. It evaluates the present and future challenges to climate change adaptation in the region in terms of social memory, rainfall variability, environmental change and armed conflicts and examines the ways in which governance and policy drivers may undermine pastoralists’ adaptive strategies. The book’s scope covers the Red Sea coast, Somaliland, Somalia, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, part of the Ethiopian highlands and Eritrea, areas where past climate change has been extreme and future change makes it vital to understand the dynamics of adaptation.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental history, human ecology, geography, climate change, environment studies, development studies, pastoralism, anthropology and African studies.

Gufu Oba is Professor of Ecology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway.