Over-reliance on water infrastructure can hinder climate resilience in pastoral drylands
Piemontese, Luigi, Terzi, Stefano, Di Baldassarre, Giuliano, Menestrey Schwieger, Diego A., Castelli, Giuliano and Bresci, Elena, (2024). Over-reliance on water infrastructure can hinder climate resilience in pastoral drylands. Nature Climate Change, 267-274
Document type:
Article
Collection:
-
Attached Files (Some files may be inaccessible until you login with your UNU Collections credentials) Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads s41558-024-01929-z.pdf s41558-024-01929-z.pdf application/pdf 7.40MB -
Sub-type Journal article Author Piemontese, Luigi
Terzi, Stefano
Di Baldassarre, Giuliano
Menestrey Schwieger, Diego A.
Castelli, Giuliano
Bresci, ElenaTitle Over-reliance on water infrastructure can hinder climate resilience in pastoral drylands Appearing in Nature Climate Change Publication Date 2024-02-16 Place of Publication London Publisher Springer Nature Start page 267 End page 274 Language eng Abstract Extreme droughts are affecting millions of livestock farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, causing water shortages, famines, migration and fatalities. The construction of new small water infrastructures (SWIs), such as deep wells and boreholes, is increasingly supported by climate resilience programmes of non-governmental organizations and national governments to improve water availability for agro-pastoralists, especially as an emergency response to extreme droughts. Although the short-term benefits of SWI are clear, their potential cumulative impact and their long-term effects on the resilience of dryland communities remain unclear. Here, building on in-depth anthropological literature from five key African drylands, we model post-drought pastoralists’ dynamics related to SWI. We show that while developing new SWI releases water shortages in the short term, it can erode traditional adaptation practices without adequate governance. We further illustrate how our model captures early quantitative signals of resilience loss in dryland Angola. This indicates that poorly governed water development in African drylands can be a limiting factor for the long-term resilience of pastoral communities facing a range of social, demographic, economic and climate challenges. Copyright Holder Springer Nature Copyright Year 2024 Copyright type Creative commons DOI 10.1038/s41558-024-01929-z -
Citation counts Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 89 Abstract Views, 52 File Downloads - Detailed Statistics Created: Mon, 18 Mar 2024, 21:45:32 JST by Aarti Basnyat on behalf of UNU EHS