The societal role oF Charcoal production in Climate-Change adaptation of the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 39

3
the soCietal role oF
CharCoal produCtion
in Climate-Change
adaptation oF the arid
and semi-arid lands oF
Kenya
Caroline A. Ochieng, Sirkku Juhola and
Francis X. Johnson
introduction
The vulnerability of drylands populations is subject to varying interpretations.
How 'vulnerability' is perceived is important in influencing how the community
or development organizations in the dryland regions respond to climate change
(Füssel 2010). In this chapter, we use 'community' as defined by Smit and
Wandel (2006) as an aggregation of households, interconnected in some way,
and with a limited spatial extent, recognizing that interests and responses may
vary between individuals in a community. The ability of the community to
cope with adverse recurring events such as droughts as well as the risks posed
by climate change forms an important part of adaptive capacity. Communities
living in drylands are generally perceived as vulnerable, given the biophysical
characteristics of the environment upon which their livelihoods depend (Adger
et al. 2004), such as water scarcity. This conceptualization has led to the widely
observed application of physical response measures in addressing vulnerability,
and in defining coping and adaptation strategies (Turner 1994; Bohle 2001;
Eriksen et al. 2005; O'Brien et al. 2007).
While some successes have been registered from these 'hard' measures, 1
there are also instances where the results have been undesirable. This is
clearly seen in Kenyan arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs), where attempts to
sedentarize nomadic practices of dryland communities have inadvertently
contributed to their vulnerability (Eriksen and Lind 2009; Ruto et al. 2009). In
our era of climate change, the ASALs have been described as more vulnerable