Energy economies and climate change in the drylands

Pastoralists use livestock to transform biomass into foods and goods. Business interests are increasingly competing with pastoralism for natural resources in the drylands that have long been considered marginal but have become a new frontier, also in the search for new sources of energy. The combination of high potential for renewable energy and low population densities has put the Omo-Turkana region in Eastern Africa into the focus of commercial interests.

Looking at sugar-based biofuel production in Ethiopia’s South Omo Zone, Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power mega project and solar-powered irrigation schemes, the paper “Energy economies, climate change and renewables in East African drylands” (2019, 15pp) by Immo Eulenberger, presented at a regional conference in Moroto, Uganda, on “Pathways to Resilience in the Karamoja Cluster”, analyses the interplay of indigenous, fossil-based and emerging energy economies, how conflicts of interests play out, and the increasing value of land and its consequences. It asks what could be done to use the region’s potential efficiently, equitably and sustainably. It argues that pastoralists’ socio-economic techniques and communal resource-management systems should be built upon innovatively in order to counter trends towards ill-informed planning, predatory accumulation and mass disenfranchisement.

This work formed part of the Conflict Prevention and Low-Carbon Development project funded by Formas (Project No. 2017–01941), Sweden.

Posted on 10 June 2022 in Pastoralism & Climate Change, Pastoralism & Extractives, Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure