Key note address by Prof. Ian Scoones during the policy convening held on 8th February at the ILRI Campus Nairobi.

I want to give a quick overview of some of the key questions and challenges we face in this area, in order to set the scene for the workshop. Over the last decades there have been huge investments in addressing disasters in the drylands of eastern Africa. You only have to travel around northern Kenya to see the signs of numerous projects focused on drought, livelihoods, social protection, resilience and more. Under Kenya’s Vision 2030 programme, the government laid out an ambitious plan to end drought emergencies by 2022. But now it’s 2024, and the region is only beginning to recover from what was perhaps the worst drought in a century.

So, what’s going wrong? Our policies and practices are not meeting their mark. There seems to be a disconnect…. Maybe we need to rethink how we go about early warning, anticipatory action, humanitarian response and resilience building in the drylands.

As already mentioned, this workshop brings together three projects, all at early stages of implementation. All are committed to interrogating this disconnect and this workshop will help link the projects and make connections with other researchers, policy makers, NGO practitioners and others so that we can work on this together.

The task is urgent. Millions of dollars are spent each year on humanitarian and emergency responses alongside ongoing development efforts building early warning systems, developing insurance products and implementing countless resilience projects. But we have to ask honestly and openly if these efforts genuinely building resilience, so that people are able to avert disasters, sustain livelihoods and rebuild after inevitable shocks strike.

I think there are a number of challenges.

First, we need to ask what is the system we are working with. In the drylands, this is often pastoralism – often mixed with trade, agriculture and other activities. Rather than thinking of alternative livelihoods, getting out of pastoralism - how can resilience be built in such systems? Pastoralism is the core livelihood for most – and will be for the foreseeable future. The end of pastoralism has long been proclaimed, but pastoralism persists, even if it changes. We do however need better knowledge of fast-changing pastoral systems, and to banish forever some of the myths about pastoralism that have plagued policymaking in the drylands since the colonial era.

Second, we need to think about how droughts and other disasters are seen on the ground. They are not single events that can be predicted and managed as risk, but emerge as part of complex systems, always uncertain, often combining with other pressures. A drought is much worse if there is conflict. Livelihood options are much more constrained if land is being grabbed. And so on. Rather than assuming that we can develop a technical fix – a satellite early warning info system, an insurance product, or whatever – we need to think about how such interventions work (or often don’t) in context. The same with humanitarian emergency relief. Of course, at key moments, support through cash transfers or food aid can be essential, but especially when such programmes persist over time, we must ask how they can link to longer-term development and build, not undermine, resilience.

Third, we need to ask how reliability can be generated in such variable, uncertain settings, so that disasters are averted. Droughts, floods, conflicts, diseases, market crashes and their combinations are not going away. With climate change, variability will only increase. As we learn from studies of other critical infrastructures, where the supply of essential goods and services must be assured, it’s the professionals and their networks at the heart of such systems that are key. Too often the disconnects arise because external experts, donor and relief agencies, NGOs and others think that they have the solution. But actually, reliability can only be generated by working closely with the men and women who continuously must manage grazing, assure water supplies, keep the peace, transport products to market, supply emergency fodder and so on. Understanding how this is done, by whom, through what relationships with which resources is an important starting point for building resilience from below, I would argue. And further, we must ask how such practices can be supported, shared and extended. And not arriving with yet another resilience project that diverts energies and focus and unnecessarily takes up people’s time.

So I hope in our discussions today we can begin to unpack some of the policy-practice disconnects in 'Early Warning, Anticipatory Action, Humanitarian Response and Resilience Building, and get to grips with why we have so often failed, but more importantly how we can do better in the future.