Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
floods due to the recent Tendaho dam among such processes. The dam had been
constructed to provide irrigation services for large areas cultivated with sugar
cane and maize, now partly converted to cotton because of soil salinization.
Most Mille respondents had been directly affected by the flooding, as dam
waters flooded back up the river (up to 35 km) washing away houses, inundating
grazing lands, depleting forests and farmlands, sweeping away livestock and
leaving families split up and stranded for days. In Uwwa, key threats to the
pastoralist way of life included an acute lack of infrastructure such as veterinary
services, water provision and schools, as well as increased migration that led to
conflict with Amhara farmers.
These processes form part of Afar-wide trends: lack of support and necessary
services for pastoralist livelihoods as well as a consistent loss of key rangeland
resources. In particular, drought grazing areas have been lost to development
schemes, settlements and to neighbouring groups (such as the Issa, a Somali
clan neighbouring the Afar in the east) over the past decades, making droughts
harder to survive (Kassa 2001; Ali 2008; Behnke and Kerven 2013). In large
parts of Afar, including Mille, important grazing areas on the eastern side of
the Awash River are increasingly unsafe as a result of conflicts with the Issa.
Although mutual raiding with some deaths and loss of livestock is not new, the
character of the conflict is described by respondents in Mille as having changed,
making it less manageable for the Afar, as shown by these two statements:
Before it was pastoralist against pastoralist but now the Issa are well
equipped and organized by backing - it is now a politics to take the land.
(woman, 45 years)
Before it looked like the Issa were looking for resources, for animals, but
now it is totally changed to a political mission.
(man, 28 years)
In order to understand the vulnerability context, local conflicts must be set
in the context of national political structures, including the system of ethnic
federalism. After the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) regime
took over in 1991, the government divided the country into nine ethnically based
administrative regions (Hagmann 2005). Several studies describe how, since
1991, political power and access to resources have become linked to control over
territory by an ethnic group or clan (Vaughan 2006; Ali 2008; Hagmann and
Mulugeta 2008). Ethnicity is used to lay political claims to pastures, especially
in borderlands (Lenaerts et al. 2014). Hence, land use is changing towards
domination by one group over land, rather than the interaction and fluidity
required in pastoral migratory strategies in the face of variable climate and
grazing patterns.
While pastoral livelihoods were becoming less viable in both sites, the
strategies into which many were being pushed served to reinforce processes
 
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