Managing the Dry Lands’ Natural Endowment: Harnessing Vegetation Resources at Hand in The Face of Increased Climatic Uncertainty in Africa, the Case of Eritrea

Abstract

Ubiquitously, more than ever, ‘climate change ‘or climatic variability is increasingly becoming a reality as manifested by recurrent droughts, increased erratic rainfalls, flooding, soaring temperatures etc. However, the impacts of climatic variability might be much more pronounced in those areas where precarious livelihoods prevail. This is particularly true in dry areas where the production is linked directly to natural resources-base that depend on subsistence pastoralism and agro-pastorlism. Despite such climate vagaries, people dry lands managed to survive under such harsh climatic uncertainty. In view of this, are there lessons that could be drawn in the way they manage and exploit their natural endowments –the vegetation? It is true, over the years nomadic and semi-nomadic people have developed and adapted an array of survival strategies in the face of increased climatic variability. These strategies did not emerge abruptly but gradually developed and adapted in response to drier conditions; and there is wealth of information where we can draw useful lessons to cope-up and eventfully adapt to climate changes. A priori, there are no fast and hard rules to draw lines between the do and don’ts and enlist procedures and criteria for survival. Hence, the objective of this paper is trigger/motivate debates on a number of ...