Elsevier

Global Environmental Change

Volume 29, November 2014, Pages 371-386
Global Environmental Change

Divergent adaptation to climate variability: A case study of pastoral and agricultural societies in Niger

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.06.014Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This research introduces divergent adaptation or the process by which one user or group's adaptation action subsequently reduces another user or group's adaptive capacity in the same ecosystem.

  • The concept is explained through a case study that identifies divergent adaptations of pastoral and agricultural groups in Niger.

  • Social responses to divergent adaptation include conflict and cooperation dynamics.

Abstract

Adaptation is a complex, dynamic, and sometimes unequal process. Stemming from social ecological systems theories of climate change adaptation and adaptive capacity, this case study introduces the concept of ‘divergent’ adaptation. Adaptation is divergent when one user or group's adaptation causes a subsequent reduction in another user or group's adaptive capacity in the same ecosystem. Using the example of pastoral and agricultural groups in northern and southern rainfall zones of Niger, this study illustrates the concept of divergent adaptation by identifying changes to the adaptive capacity of users who are currently engaged in conflicts over access to natural resources. Similar to other studies, we find that expansion of farmland and the consequent loss of pastoral space are restricting pastoral adaptation. Divergent adaptations favoring agricultural livelihoods include cultivating near or around pastoral wells or within pastoral corridors, both of which limit the mobility and entitlements of pastoralists. Institutions rarely secure pastoral routes and access to water points, a problem that is compounded by conflicting modes of governance, low accountability, and corruption. The case study illustrates the need to enhance the adaptive capacity of multiple user groups to reduce conflict, enhance human security, and promote overall resilience.

Introduction

A significant amount of security-based literature about climate change has been published in the past couple of decades. Many analyses have purported that climate change threatens human and environmental security and could lead to greater conflict (Barnett and Adger, 2007, Burke et al., 2009, Brown and Crawford, 2009, Dalby, 2009, Scheffran et al., 2012, Hsiang et al., 2013). Other studies have shown empirically that the links between climate change and violent conflict are indirect or non-existent (Buhaug, 2010, Benjaminsen et al., 2012). Furthermore, it has been shown that vulnerability from climate change could accentuate pre-existing social inequities of some of the world's more economically impoverished and marginalized groups (Kates, 2000, Adger, 2003, Thomas and Twyman, 2005). Such inequalities and marginalization have been shown in social science literature as a social condition that leads to conflict (Collier and Hoeffler, 1998, Stewart, 2002, Cramer, 2003). Thus, climate events, while not a single factor enhancing conflict or cooperation do impact vulnerabilities, marginalization, and inequality, which can have greater impact on social dynamics (Kloos et al., 2013).

This paper presents a theoretical framework that analyzes how adaptation as a process can reduce the vulnerability to impacts of climate change for some and increase the vulnerability for others, which can trigger social responses such as cooperation or conflict. Previous work on barriers to adaptation has shown that obstacles that reduce one's adaptive capacity can be overcome with concerted effort, creative management, and shifts related to resources, land use, and institutional arrangements (Adger et al., 2009, Moser and Ekstrom, 2010); yet, no framework sufficiently addresses the unintended consequences that could result from inequities, marginalization, and biases.

This research is not seeking to contribute to the neo-Malthusian discourse that climate change induces conflict (Miguel et al., 2004, Burke et al., 2009). Rather, it provides an empirical analysis of adaptation as a localized, complex, and dynamic process that is framed by multiple factors including non-climate factors (Moser and Ekstrom, 2010) and includes responses that are sometimes complex social and institutional dynamics. Examined through the lens of societal incongruities, this study presents a paradox that those who stand most in need of adaptation are often those who will benefit the least, a process that has not been found to be void of conflicts (Turner, 2010, Turner, 2011).

The purpose of this paper is to clarify and reveal if climate variability and related vulnerabilities can be linked to social dynamics such as conflict and cooperation. We introduce a divergent adaptation framework for which the main concepts (adaptive capacity, conflict and cooperation, and institutional mechanisms) are unpacked and explained. The framework is empirically demonstrated through a case study in the Sahel that critically analyzes multiple users’ rural adaptation mechanisms in two livelihood zones of Niger and under conditions of water-related stress. Natural resource conflicts including those related to water access are central to the discussion of divergent adaptation. The divergent adaptation concept is relevant to current discourses on conflict and development in the context of climate resilience and adaptation in the Sahel and in other regions.

Section snippets

Adaptation as a complex social process

When faced with an adversarial environment, humans are inherently adaptive (Engle, 2011). Adaptation is a response to human or environmental stimuli and can be structural or behavioral, occur before or after the event or stimuli, and may buffer or sustain activities, or transform the state of the social-ecological system or SES (Folke, 2006, Renaud et al., 2010, Berrang-Ford et al., 2011).

Adaptation does not have a tendency to eliminate social inequities. It is perceived that local level

Research design

To best demonstrate the relationship between climate- and water-related stress and social interactions in the SES, the research was carried out along a rainfall gradient in both the official pastoral zone of Niger (hereafter referred to as the ‘pastoral zone’ or ‘the North’) and in the southern cultivation zone of Niger (also referred to as ‘the South,’ Fig. 2). Key research sites in the water-stressed region of Tahoua were selected based on a review of judicial documents and interviews with

Rainfall variability as the key stressor

Research on both future and past rainfall shows a history of desiccation, drought, and variability in the Sahel (Hulme, 2001, Brooks, 2004, Shanahan, 2009). There were major drought events in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (Baier, 1976) followed by seven severe droughts in the 20th Century during 1910–1916, 1941–1945, 1968, 1973–1974, 1984, 1987, and 1989 (FEWSNET, 2011). The 1990s showed a slight increase in rainfall (Brooks, 2004), and this was followed by a higher frequency of drought

Link to climate variability

In the past 15–35 years, rainfall variability and heavy exploitation has shifted the social ecological system in the agricultural zone, producing losses to soil quality, biodiversity and forest cover in some areas. The location and production of fields has changed such that respondents found that the harvest of a single field prior to the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s now requires four similarly sized fields. The easiest way to increase production has been to expand agriculture into areas

Discussion: institutional feedback for divergent adaptations

As shown through the examples of divergent adaptation in northern and southern resource regimes, Users B experiencing a loss of adaptive capacity provide feedback to Users A and institutions. For instance, transhumant pastoralists (TPs, Users B here) lack entitlements, financial and human capital, and social networks in the North. Users A in both the North (LPs) and South (A, AH, APs) express high levels of resentment and fear toward the TPs, especially where there are concurrent levels of

Conclusion and policy recommendations

This paper introduces the concept of divergent adaptation to describe a situation in which the success of one individual or group's adaptation causes a subsequent reduction in another individual or group's adaptive capacity. Divergent adaptation is not simply another term to define “winners and losers” or “haves and have-nots.” Rather, the term illustrates how the process of adaptation has the ability to bring about unequal access to entitlements, institutions, and resources; change social

Acknowledgements

Financial support for this study was provided by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme. The authors wish to thank Youssouf Wadine for field translation and support under challenging security conditions. Thanks are also due to the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) for hosting our research team.

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