Colonial Trans-frontier Grazing Controls: Responses to Political and Climatic Shocks, 1908–1962

This chapter presents the climate history, politics, and pastoralists’ adaptations in the southern Ethiopian and northern Kenyan frontier—then known as the Northern Frontier District (NFD) during the colonial era. When it was established, the boundary split the grazing and water resources of pastoralists on both sides of the border. We discuss how colonial partitioning of frontier pastoralists adversely affected their adaptive strategies and describe colonial contests over implementing the trans-frontier pastoralists’ grazing treaty of 1907. Implementing the treaty became a contentious political issue between three empires that occupied this frontier at one time or another. Further, internal administrative lines in the NFD that controlled grazing did not respond to climate variability, thus making access to the frontier water and grazing resources essential for the survival of the pastoralists and their herds. The lengthy historical analysis shows that very wet years were interspersed with droughts, famine, and periods of locust plagues, all of which influenced pastoralist adaptive strategies. The regional famine that collapsed the pastoral economy returned four times over five decades. The heaviest rainfalls were at intervals of 10 to 15 years. Rainfall deviations from the long-term mean disclosed 56.8 percent drought years, compared to 43.2 percent as average to above average rainfall years. During this period, despite periodic shocks, the persistence of pastoralism suggests evidence of resilience.