Living Land

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Some people in Karamoja survive and cope during dry

periods in spite of extreme poverty and vulnerability.

Different survival practices with negative and unintentional

consequences are utilized for survival. These include sand

mining, gold mining and charcoal burning. The large number

of NGOs and United Nations organizations involved in

humanitarian support also assist livelihoods to survive but

this is not sustainable due to the development of a depend-

ency syndrome among the people in Karamoja.

The best and most sustainable example of coping with dry

periods is the pastoralist system.

Pastoralists have sufficient

land to follow the water and grazing. They move their animals

from the dry regions to regions with sufficient grazing. The

current land ownership system and relatively low animal

numbers allows for such movement. However, the restock-

ing programme from the Government is threatening this

strategy. Animal numbers in Karamoja declined by about 50

per cent after the successful disarmament programme of the

‘Karamoja warriors’ in 2008. An unintentional consequence

was that rebels and others from neighbouring south Sudan

and Kenya then raided and stole large numbers of animals

without resistance from the Karamoja pastoralists. Reduced

animal numbers allow for the recovery of overgrazed land

and therefore sufficient grazing for pastoralists. Restocking

will increase pressure on available grazing and the pastoralist

system will also be more vulnerable to dry periods.

Drought risk is a more complex problem than what is

normally defined as a negative deficit in annual mean rain-

fall. Rainfall distribution is important, as is annual rainfall,

but farmers, government and development partners cannot

do anything about that. When farmers start to experience

droughts every second year, clearly there is a problem with

the agricultural system; it is not adapted to the current

climatic conditions and requires adaptation, or farmers

employ risk-seeking methodologies such as poor agricul-

tural practices.

Most of the droughts experienced in in Karamoja since

2000 are in fact man-made and not the result of poor climatic

conditions; that means that agriculturalists and pastoral-

ists can do something about drought risk. They can reduce

drought risk and build resiliency against drought simply by

implementing good agricultural practices. In order to achieve

that, they must have the necessary knowledge and institu-

tional support. Limitations in terms of cultural beliefs, gender

and security should also be addressed.

Development partners such as NGOs and United Nations

organizations can reduce drought risk by implementing

coordinated and specifically designed programmes with

a focus on drought risk reduction. Government should

develop and implement policies and create an environment

for sustainable development according to a commonly

agreed strategy in Karamoja.

Gold mining is a survival practice that has negative and unintentional consequences

Image: DiMTEC

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