Pastoralist Resilience to Environmental Collapse in East Africa since 1500

Gufu Oba is Professor at the Faculty of Landscape and Society (LANDSAM) in the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

• Chapter 1. Managing Resilience in Pastoralism: An Introduction.- Part I Regional Memories of Disasters.- Chapter 2. Historical Research Methods: Regional and Local Cases.- Chapter 3. Social Memory on a Historical Scale: Configuring Cyclic Disasters, 1500–the 1900s.- Chapter 4. Colonial Trans-frontier Grazing Controls: Responses to Political and Climatic Shocks, 1908–1962.- Part II Reorganization and Adaptive Diversities.- Chapter 5. Collapse and Transformation of Pastoralism: Pathways of Land-use Change, the 1960s–2000.- Chapter 6. The Individual in Drought Livestock Management Strategies: Mobility as a Proxy for Pastoral Resilience, the 1980s–2011.- Chapter 7. Impacts of Decadal Droughts on Cattle Populations: Tracking Household Wealth Dynamics, 1982–2011.- Part III Collapse and Transformation of Social Capital Networks.- Chapter 8. Resilience of Social Capital Networks: Collapse and Transformation, 1991–2012.- Chapter 9. Resilient Neighborhood Household Food Security: Women’s SocialCapital Networks, 1987–1996.- Chapter 10. Innovating Pastoral Resilience in the Future: A Synthesis./

“The historical events each chapter describes and the different forms of adaptation are put into the context of meteorological events. … The author envisages the immediate use of the book as a foundational text for a pastoralist training centre in the Obbu Boran region. In this context, too, it will be a source of inspiration and the rich information the book provides bodes well for the success of this enterprise.” (Günther Schlee, Nomadic Peoples, May 1, 2025)