Social innovation and climate adaptation: Local collective action in diversifying Tanzania

Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Applied Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog

Social innovation and climate adaptation: Local collective action in diversifying Tanzania Daivi Rodima-Taylor African Studies Center, Boston University, 232 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02115, USA

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Adaptation Climate change Social innovation Institutions Diversification Tanzania

In African communities, informal associations are becoming increasingly important in shaping and mediating local adaptation practices. The study suggests that the concept of social innovation is useful for analyzing climate adaptation in the multiscale institutional environments with complex vulnerability contexts. Small-scale local associations have a potential to facilitate collective experimentation and risk management, contributing to the resilience and sustainability of the social-ecological system. Ethnographic focus is on the informal associations of economic cooperation and dispute mediation of Kuria people of northwest Tanzania, and the ways these institutional forms facilitate resource management and the negotiation of difference under income diversification. Organizational features of the groups are examined that facilitate social innovation and alternative patterns of communication, effecting flexible and relational connections between scales. The study examines the features of the local institutions that have a potential to enhance local adaptive capacity, and discusses possible challenges to sustainable climate adaptation. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Heltberg, Siegel, & Jorgensen, 2010; Mertz, Halsnaes, Olesen, & Rasmussen, 2009). Climate-related instabilities intersect with other stressors in the complex vulnerability contexts that characterize African communities, frequently exacerbating social marginalization and local inequalities (Eriksen et al., 2011; O’Brien, Quinlan, & Ziervogel, 2009). The discourses of community-based climate adaptation (Duarte et al., 2007; Reid et al., 2009) have highlighted the issues of community participation in environmental management. The increasing recognition of the importance of social dimensions of climate change has raised questions about the role of local collective action and institutional dynamics in climate action. There is accumulating evidence about the growing institutional diversity and proliferation of multiple coping strategies in response to increasing environmental variability, but the implications of these institutional arrangements that mediate local cooperation and conflict to local adaptive capacity are still poorly understood. This study examines the informal associations of economic cooperation and social control among Kuria people of Tanzania, arguing that these novel institutional arrangements constitute an adaptation to growing environmental and socioeconomic instability. It explores how these institutional forms facilitate negotiations over resource use in the context of spreading income diversification and offer flexible adaptation alternatives for the socially marginal. Organizational features of

Local informal associations are central in shaping adaptive responses to climate change in poor communities of Africa. Informal mutual help institutions regulate access to natural resources and cash supplies, manage growing population mobility and income diversification, and affect participation in local governance and community decision-making. Among the Kuria people of north-west Tanzania, the proliferating work and contribution groups creatively mix new and old resources and organizational templates. Offering novel opportunities for the poor and marginal, the groups enable inventive adaptation strategies to address growing local vulnerability. The study argues for the importance of small-scale, flexible organizational forms that allow for local experimentation and learning in climate adaptation. It examines the organizational features of the local institutions and their multiscale connections that have a potential to enhance local adaptive capacity, and discusses related institutional challenges to sustainable climate adaptation. The need to view climate action within a broader framework of sustainable development has gained wider attention in recent climate action research (Ayers & Forsyth, 2009, pp. 24e30;

E-mail address: [email protected]. 0143-6228/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2011.10.005

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

the Kuria mutual help groups are examined that facilitate social innovation and alternative patterns of communication among the participants. The study seeks to evaluate the impact of the Kuria informal associations to local adaptive capacity, situating the analysis within a broader context of social and environmental processes that drive local vulnerability. Climate adaptation and social innovation Increasing environmental vulnerability intersects with broader socio-economic instabilities in many African communities. Growing climate variability and pressures on land and water resources combine with destabilizing economic and political variables with adverse impacts to market access, infrastructure and employment. The complex interconnections between climate vulnerability and the issues of social inequalities and marginalization have gained wider attention recently (Ayers & Forsyth, 2009; Heltberg et al., 2010; O’Brien et al., 2009). The focus in climate action research has shifted to collective action, community resilience, and community-based adaptation to climate variability. The growing recognition of social dimensions of climate change has drawn attention to the pivotal role of institutions as mediating local climate adaptation and structuring collective action for environmental management. However, it often remains challenging to account for the growing diversity of local institutions and the contested resource claims and differentiation arising from these. Community-based approaches to climate action therefore frequently suffer from a view of communities as homogenous and norm-bound. These structuralist-inspired interpretations of institutions as antecedents to social action may fail to account for social differences and agency (Leach, Mearns, & Scoones, 1999, pp. 229e230). A more dynamic approach to local collective action sees adaptation as a context-specific process, involving a multitude of actors with specific interests and agendas. In societies that rely on multiple property use regimes and frequently contested claims in natural resource management, the ability to act collectively is an important determinant of local adaptation (Adger, 2003 and 1999). Contextualization of climate vulnerability therefore necessitates attention to local livelihood strategies and the mediation of resource entitlements at multiple social scales (Ribot, 2010). Environmental entitlements, encompassing the context-specific and processual interrelationships between the ecological variables and scale levels pertaining to their use, are dependent on negotiations between social actors, “involving power relationships and debates over meaning” (Leach et al., 1999, p. 235). The resulting view of the institutions as ensuing from “regularized practices” (p. 238), both socially embedded as well as amenable to change through social action, makes it possible to include a diverse variety of institutional arrangements in the analysis of environmental adaptation. It highlights the role of multi-stranded obligations and multiplex relationships of local informal institutions in resource management and claim-making, making it possible to locate the impetus for institutional change within the local dynamics of collective action and resource use. Attention to the micro-level dynamics of the institutional arrangements involved in climate adaptation allows us to conceptualize institutional innovation and change as arising internally and identify their sources and ways of diffusion. The concept of social innovation can be considered useful for analyzing climate adaptation in the increasingly complex institutional environments of poor African communities. This encompasses strategies, ideas and organizational patterns that address social issues and pertain to strengthening local associational environment and civic institutions. Because of their public and collaborative nature, social innovations are often effective in addressing the issues of social

129

inequality and inclusion (Leadbeater, 2007). The notion also refers to the “open source” methods of the innovation processes and experimental learning (Moulaert & Sekia, 2003), encompassing their diffuse origins and multiple applications. Social innovation can thus give rise to community development that is alternative to market- or state-led development (Moulaert & Nussbaumer, 2005), while still influencing public policy and formal governance. Through its emphasis on the diffuse and open origins of innovation and learning with their diverse applications, the notion of social innovation relies on a non-hierarchical conceptualization of a social-ecological system (Holling, Gunderson, & Ludwig, 2002; Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004). The dynamics of the small-scale embedded units of a complex adaptive system are characterized by relational and horizontal (rhyzomatic) connections between units and ideas, thereby contrasting with the more hierarchical (aborescent) ties of formal administration and governance (Scott-Cato & Hillier, 2010, p. 872). These processually arising “rhizomes” as diffuse networks “nested” within one another enable multiple perspectives and modes of action through continuously negotiated difference, and facilitate unregulated and fluid connections between scales (p. 879). Drawing upon local initiative and alternative patterns of communication, these nested structures have a potential to introduce flexibility and transformation into reified structures, and may benefit the creative adaptation of ecosystems. Social innovation as occurring within the embedded scales of the adaptive system thus highlights the participatory, informal and multi-purpose institutional dimensions of climate adaptation. Potential adaptive changes should therefore be sought within local, small-scale institutions and networks. The social embeddedness of many informal institutions in African communities renders them multi-purpose and facilitates as well as mediates social differentiation. Various local networks of reciprocity and debt and arrangements of mutual help are instrumental in inciting heterogeneity and new social forms through mediating cooperation and conflict. Studying adaptation in Kuria communities: research setting and methods Climate related events and insecurities are significantly impacting many Tanzanian communities. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reduced and unpredictable water availability is one of the main effects of climate change in Africa (Mwiturubani, 2010, p. 63). Growing rainfall variability is resulting in periodic flooding in some areas of Tanzania and severe droughts in others, particularly inland regions (Mniwaza & Shauri, 2001; Mwandosya, Nyenzi, & Luhanga, 1998; Nelson & Stathers, 2009; Orindi, Kibona, & Moindi, 2006). A rise of 2e4 degrees Celsius is predicted in the mean annual temperature, and areas with two rainfall seasons may expect an increase in rainfall from 5 to 45% (Orindi et al., 2006, p. 12). Potential for heavy flood damage has increased in the long rains seasons from March to May, leading to problems of nutrient leaching and water logging that affect soil fertility. Costs of agricultural production are on the rise due to growing demand for agrochemicals and diseaseresistant varieties, and maize yields may reduce by about 33% over the entire country, contributing to malnutrition (p. 13). Malaria transmission rates are expected to increase drastically, which in the coastal areas of Lake Victoria are already among the highest in the country. Severe climate variability has a potential to contribute to crop failures, pests and diseases, economic mobility and migration, and affect adversely gendered and associational work patterns. Decreased rainfall, droughts, deforestation and land degradation are the main environmental problems resulting from climate

130

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

change in the Lake Victoria Basin, directly affecting Kuria livelihood.1 Water scarcity and increased variability of the flow of water affects also the Mara river (Mwiturubani, 2010), the main river of the Mara River Sub-Basin that originates in Kenya and is the principal water provider of Kuria areas in Mara region, Tanzania. A severe decrease of wetlands has occurred on the Tanzanian side of the Mara River Sub-Basin, with water supply in many local water sources becoming seasonal (p. 69). Changes in water availability have adversely affected local livelihoods and food security, causing a rise in conflict over water access at the levels of households, administrative and territorial units, as well as livelihood systems (pp. 72e75). According to Mwiturubani, the rapidly escalating multi-level conflicts and declining local livelihoods indicate an urgency to incorporate environmental and water issues in broader development planning and policy formulation in the area. The measures to reduce climate vulnerability in Tanzania have mainly been focused on technical solutions, with less attention to the social components of vulnerability (Orindi et al., 2006). There is a need for a more integrated analysis of local adaptive capacity (p. 15). In addition to technically oriented measures like introducing short season crops, changing crop rotation practices and strengthening the control of pests and diseases, the measures addressing the social needs of the communities should include recognition of customary natural resource and land rights, addressing gender discrimination in resource access, and providing rural insurance systems for the vulnerable (p. 17). Such insurance systems include rural credit facilities as well as the revival of farmers’ associations. Economic liberalization in Tanzania has produced an increased need for cash. Ellis and Mdoe (2003) point out that to overcome rural poverty, it is vital for rural households in Tanzania to diversify across farm and non-farm activities, and income generating activities in the villages should be encouraged through trade and enterprise development (pp. 1381e1382). The ecological conditions of Kuria communities pose particular challenges for economic diversification and environmental adaptation. Kuria people are semi-pastoralists who inhabit Mara region of northwest Tanzania. The size of Mara region is about 30,150 square kilometers, with 7750 of it covered by Lake Victoria and 7000 by Serengeti National Park. Its population of over one million makes it one of the most densely populated regions in Tanzania (SocioEconomic Profile, The United Republic of Tanzania, 2002). Tarime is one of the five administrative districts, and the main site of my field research. Tarime highlands are situated at an altitude of 1500e1800 m above sea level, with an approximate area of 550 square kilometers. Dense population in the fertile highland areas puts pressure on land use and reduces areas available for grazing. Cash cropping in the district has intensified, with traditional staple crops like fingermillet and sorghum increasingly replaced by bananas, coffee and maize. That exacerbates gender inequalities at the household level, as cash crops are traditionally considered men’s domain. Declining soil fertility affects grain production in particular. Off-farm activities are an important cash source in the local villages, including handicrafts, petty trade, construction, carpentry, and brickmaking (Socio-Economic Profile, The United Republic of Tanzania, 2002). Cattle are a locally highly valued accumulation and saving mechanism, with the “aspiration to increase livestock numbers” (p. 27) resulting in further pressures on rangelands and reduced access to cash. Partly due to high rates of polygamy, local households have a high dependency ratio, highlighting the vulnerability of women and children particularly in polygynous households.

1 The Lake Victoria Basin covers areas in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, with 44% of it in Tanzania (Mwiturubani, 2010).

The research on Kuria associational environment and income diversification was part of my field study over the period of 32 months during 1999e2002. The ethnographic field research took place in the local communities of Tarime and Serengeti districts of Mara region, as well as shorter stays in Bunda, Musoma, Mwanza and Ukerewe districts where comparative information was collected about local work groups and labor cooperation. The research comprised six villages of Tarime district and three villages of Serengeti district and included longitudinal participant observation and informal interviews, formal and semi-formal surveys and questionnaires, in-depth interviews with economic group members and local farmers, local and central government authorities, nongovernmental organizations and development programs at local and national scales. Through interviews with the informal economic groups, information was collected about group activities and purpose, time and resource expenditures and gains, management of group property (group fund, communal farm, tools and workshops), group membership and recruiting criteria, organizational structure, by-laws and sanctions, relations with local authorities and development initiatives, and moral evaluations of the group activities. Longitudinal participant observation was conducted with a selected sample of groups to gain information about the patterns of cooperation in the groups, labor and cash contributions and reciprocities, management of common resources, distribution of gains between the participants, membership dynamics, dispute mediation and resolution, and changes in group activities and organizational structure over time. Interviews with local clan, neighborhood and elders’ councils were used to gain insights into their role in mediating local disputes and regulate the management of natural resources. My research also benefited from historical records at the Tanzanian National Archives, research collections at the libraries of the University of Dar es Salaam, Institute of Development Studies and Institute of Resource Assessment at UDSM, as well as interviews and research at the Tanzanian Women’s Research Center, Tanzanian National Bank, and Ukiriguru Agricultural Research Institute in Mwanza. Managing climate vulnerability: mutual help groups and income diversification The vulnerability context Severe volatility of agro-climatic as well as political and economic environments has characterized many African communities over the recent decades, with important consequences to resource access and production (Berry, 1989, p. 41). According to Berry, these instabilities have impacted local institutions of resource access and networks of collaboration, reinforcing dependence on social identity and a proliferation of multiplex social ties. In some cases, that may lead to over-fragmentization of obligations, endowments, and productive efforts. Investigating the long-term sustainability of local adaptation strategies is therefore an important element of climate action research. Aiming to avoid potential negative outcomes and trade-offs, the concept of “sustainable adaptation” emphasizes the need to view adaptation as a longitudinal social process rather than a list of technical measures, with a focus on social justice and environmental integrity (Eriksen & Brown, 2011). The sustainable adaptation approach highlights the importance of local knowledge and local value differences, but calls for analyzing these in a broader context of multiple stressors that may impact local vulnerability (Eriksen et al., 2011; Gatchathi & Eriksen, 2011). The mechanisms of local adaptation like economic diversification and associational proliferation should therefore be examined within a wider vulnerability context, enabling a differentiated focus on multiple social groups and categories, including the most marginal.

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

Income diversification is becoming increasingly relevant as a local strategy to combat spreading rural poverty in Tanzania. The increasing need for cash affects especially the marginal social groups. Growing climate variability in Tanzania has destabilized the position of women in the household and increased their workloads (Nelson & Stathers, 2009; Orindi et al., 2006; Shayo, 2007). Frequent crop failures and male outmigration place an increasing labor burden on women who are the primary cultivators (Nelson & Stathers, 2009). As women’s access to land is frequently conditioned through their relationships with men, they are increasingly marginalized in household decision-making and resource access (Orindi et al., 2006, p. 29). The issues of social inclusion and genderand age-based marginalization are therefore paramount in local climate vulnerability in Tanzanian communities. Women’s work and contribution groups were a relatively recent phenomenon, related to recent liberalization reforms and the decline of the formal sector in post-socialist Tanzania (see Swantz & Tripp, 1996; Mbilinyi, 1999; Mungongo, 1998; Omari, 1996). The Kuria mutual help groups have functioned as an important socio-cultural adaptation mechanism through many recent shocks and social changes. Partly based on important elements of traditional social organization, the contemporary work groups entail important innovations, in some cases introducing new social categories of participants like women not related by kin and enabling novel conversions that facilitate the integration of money in the local economy. In 1970s and 80s, profound changes had taken place in Kuria society, including the massive resettlement initiatives of the socialist villagization reforms, growing economic migration, and violent cattle theft. Several acute climate related shocks have also occurred in the recent past, including the heavy rainfall and flooding caused by El Nino-related climate events in 1997e98. In Mara region, these events resulted in severe damage to road and water infrastructure and agricultural crops, causing erosion of fields and pastures and impairing access to local markets. Facilitating the adaptive capacity of the marginal Compared to the Kuria mutual aid associations of the past (Matango, 1976; Ruel, 1959), the contemporary groups entailed multiple novel elements. The traditional groups had operated as parts of larger social networks based on descent, age grades or generation classes. As my research showed, the present work groups are more permanent, with more defined boundaries and membership. The groups are active in agriculture (performing rotating farm labor for the group members or even engaging in group farming) as well as non-agricultural activities. They can incorporate savings-credit arrangements, manage farm plots or workshops in common, and work for wealthier outsiders for money payment. The groups shared knowledge about new cultivation techniques, crop varieties and markets, and provided social support for their members. The present-day mutual help groups were generally formed around friendship and common interests, rather than kin or descent loyalties. Their activities were still often rationalized with the “traditional” Kuria sentiments of cooperation and sharing, and that seeming continuity with the past added an important dimension of social legitimacy to their activities. The groups functioned as important risk management mechanisms, with communal pooling and diversification as the principal strategies.2 Communal pooling is defined as “an adaptation practice

2

Adaptation strategies can be analyzed by the ways they help distribute climate related risks to livelihood practices and capabilities: across space (mobility), time (storage), various categories of assets (diversification) and actors (pooling), and different modes of exchange (Agrawal, 2010 and 2008).

131

that involves joint ownership of assets and resources; sharing of wealth, labor, or incomes from particular activities across households; and/or mobilization and use of resources that are held collectively during times of scarcity” (Agrawal, 2010, p. 184). In Kuria groups, various resources were pooled or shared, including labor, money (in rotating savings-credit groups), income from joint economic activities or group farms, livestock, household implements and agricultural tools, skills of a particular trade and market information. Income diversification encompassed a multitude of non-agricultural activities like brick-making, tailoring and handicrafts, running of small retail stores and street stalls, cooking and catering businesses, but also seasonal or short-term cultivation of non-traditional crops and livestock (for example, quickly growing vegetables for tourist lodges and local markets; poultry and beekeeping). Multiple different items and services were channeled and reciprocated through group activities, including labor contributions and exchanges, transfers of cooked food and drinks, agricultural products and farm implements, even poultry and cattle. Cash exchanges and transfers were fluidly mixing with other types of resource flows in the groups, resulting in innovative conversions and regulating the impact of money in Kuria communities (Rodima, 2007). Group activities constituted an important vehicle for economic advancement for marginal social categories like women and youth, helping them to manage growing vulnerability. In Kuria households, women had been relegated to less profitable crops like cassava and fingermillet, because of the recent movement of men from cattle rearing to agriculture and their growing monopoly of local cash crops, affecting gendered work patterns and distribution of resources in the household (see also BakemaBoon, 1991). Work groups offered their members novel opportunities to refashion their economic standing and social identities through broader access to resources, trade and activity partners, increased negotiating skills, and a rise in social prestige. Many women were members of several work groups and/or rotating savings associations at the same time. Income diversification that the groups offered had therefore a potential to contribute to a greater social inclusion and economic prosperity of the women, as well as in some cases, sharpen social inequalities or overwhelm the participants with multiple conflicting tasks. When analyzing the impact of short-term income diversification projects to adaptive capacity and resilience among smallholder farmers in Kenya and Tanzania, Eriksen, Brown, and Kelly (2005) point out that these strategies had a potential to positively contribute to local adaptive capacity. However, the individuals who had a chance to specialize in a primary income generating activity benefited more from the new economic avenues. That was often affected by one’s resource entitlements and access to customary security networks. In Kuria case, however, one’s membership in various local work groups and associations served to provide access to those resources and entitlements. Therefore, the individuals who belonged to various groups were frequently more successful in their diversified activities than those whose security networks were based on kin only. In the latter case, diversification could easily result in over-fragmentation of one’s time and work effort, leading to conflicting obligations with diminishing returns. Differentiation and assemblage as adaptive features The present-day Kuria mutual help groups constitute a flexible indigenous adaptation mechanism that entails multiple new elements, but derives its socio-cultural legitimacy from the templates of traditional social organization. The groups provide a flexible and risk-minimizing environment for their members for

132

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

experimentation with novel activities and ways of association. The members are peers with common interests and similar economic standing. Friendship, trust, and social prestige are therefore important determinants in group recruitment. The group members recounted in many instances how they “had come together with a couple of friends” to start a work group, or added more functions (i.e. a small business project or rotating cash contribution circle) to an already existing group of neighbors who regularly assisted each other with farm work. That gradual adding on new functions and activities was the most prevalent means of expansion for the associations. Some groups were over 80 people in size (usually rotating cash contribution groups e locally called ikomiti’s), but even these larger groups had frequently originated from joint activities of a small group of friends. For example, a 30-person ikomiti in Kenyamanyori village was initiated by five women in 1998 who ran a beer making group (machicha). Several of the larger groups contained people from various different villages or clan units e proving that common goals and values were considered more important than geographic proximity or kin ties. At the same time, larger cash contribution groups were frequently divided into smaller reciprocal farm work groups. The ease and flexibility that characterized the differentiation of various functions and organizational features of the groups thus also applied to the processes of expansion and assemblage. Both expansion and differentiation were based on relational and horizontal connections between individuals with similar interests and values. These rhyzomic connections thereby introduced an element of constant innovation and possibilities of transformation into the static structures of local descent and political authority hierarchies. They enabled marginal social categories like women, youth, and poorer farmers to set up innovative yet socially acceptable means of income accumulation and improve their livelihoods through added security networks. Secrecy was an important element in many of the groups, with by-laws and sanctions against “taking out group secrets.” That created a safe environment for women, shielding their income from the exploitative kin demands by women’s husbands and co-wives. That supportive environment facilitated negotiation of differences and mediation of disputes. The mutual help groups were therefore important sites of local “micropolitics,” helping to manage contentious social issues. Scott-Cato and Hillier (2010) contrast that concept with “macropolitics” as associated with the hierarchical, aborescent structures of political authority, class and gender. Micropolitics as an informal and creative relational action, on the other hand, “tends to generate qualitative change” and “incites a heterogeneity,” thereby creating “space for potential difference” (pp. 873e874). The horizontally expanding diffuse networks of mutual help groups facilitated diverse perspectives and new modes of action. Because of their flexibility and local, small-scale operation, Kuria mutual help groups enabled an easy incorporation of various diversified economic activities at both individual and group levels of organization. Almost every work group practiced more than one economic activity, mixing farming activities with off-farm projects, and group- managed enterprises with individual business activities for their members. The diversity of the groups was another asset, enabling them to serve different functions for different social categories - including women and men, young and old. The work groups often worked in alliances with each other or with larger associations for specific activities, facilitating multi-level connections between different organizational scales and geographic locations. By stimulating debates and negotiation of difference in resource use between genders and age categories as well as kin and community power hierarchies, the groups enabled alternatives that can effect positive adaptive change in the local social-ecological system.

Interfacing the formal and informal in decentralizing Kuria communities Small-scale informal institutions have an important role in regulating disputes over environmental management and natural resource governance in Kuria communities. The effects of these organizational arrangements to local adaptive capacity are particularly important in the conditions of a relative ineffectiveness of many formal initiatives that have aimed to improve community participation in natural resource governance. Enhancing local participation in environmental management has been the goal of multiple central policy initiatives in Tanzania over the recent decades. Most of these have occurred in the framework of the Local Government Decentralization Program (LGRP) that was launched at the end of 1990s, accompanied by several macro-policy initiatives including The National Forestry Policy, National Environment Policy, Wildlife Policy, and National Land Policy. These were supposed to facilitate institutional arrangements for community involvement in natural resource management and local-level decision-making, with improved communication between different institutional scales. One of the primary goals of the LGRP was strengthening local government authorities (particularly district administration)3 and transferring fiscal funds and responsibilities to local district councils. The decentralization program has produced mixed results so far in its efforts to improve local environmental management. Deficiencies exist in institutional integration that would empower local authorities to effectively manage natural resources (Mniwaza & Shauri, 2001); communication is lacking between local authorities and civil society organizations (Shayo, 2007). Local councils lack sufficient mandates in environmental decision-making, and the central government often continues to gain the main benefits from wildlife, water and forest reserves (Mniwaza & Shauri, 2001). Despite the shortcomings of the formal local authority decentralization program in facilitating community participation, novel informal institutions of community management have emerged among Kuria alongside the economic ones discussed earlier. These include transformations of traditional authority structures like neighborhood courts and elders’ councils and the rise of some novel arrangements of social control. The broader vulnerability context of the Kuria communities includes the consequences of socialist ujamaa villagization campaigns of 1970s with a compulsory resettlement of the dispersed hilltop households into densely populated villages. Cattle raiding had escalated into a violent market-oriented activity in the 1990s, affecting Kuria youth. Increasing disputes over access to resources like farmland, water, and pasture, and the escalating fighting over cattle had been accompanied by an emergence of several novel arrangements of community management, mostly based on adaptive transformations of the institutions of traditional social organization. The most important of these is the clan meeting e litongo (iritongo) as well as the secret elders’ council inchama, which has become increasingly important in adjudicating local disputes. The present litongo’s are more neighborhood oriented than based on clan and descent, and have in many cases developed their own armed reinforcement units.4 The traditional secret councils e inchama’s e serving as prophets and silent moral guardians of the Kuria clans in the past, have also obtained more active roles as dispute mediators and become more closely involved in community politics.

3 The new administrative system consists of the following levels: central government, regions, districts, divisions, wards, villages and sub-villages. 4 That coincided with the rise of similar informal armed vigilate units e sungusungu’s among neighboring Sukuma people and in several other areas of Tanzania.

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

The increasing local need for residency-based representation in environmental management e as opposed to descent-based representation of the clan units e was also reflected in the growing popularity of large community assemblies: baraza’s. These incorporated people from various clans and ethnic groups as well as multiple villages,5 cutting across various traditional solidarities (clan and descent groups, age grades and generation classes). The baraza’s served as an effective link between state institutions like police and primary courts and informal peacekeeping structures, routinely collaborating with the elders’ council (inchama). Both baraza’s as well as traditional clan and elders’ councils constituted versatile and participatory venues for managing local environmental disputes, the most important of which were frequent conflicts over cattle rustling, disagreements over land use between livestock keepers and crop cultivators, and disputes over water access in the conditions of the drastically declining water resources of the Mara river. The neighborhood clan councils, vigilante groups and multi-village assemblies thus provide alternative venues for regulating environmental disputes and negotiating claims under growing instabilities. These informal institutions of social control combine traditional authority patterns with innovative elements of dispute management in the changed vulnerability context of the Kuria communities. The institution of multi-village baraza, for example, is popular largely because of its flexible and democratic set-up, as well as for providing a set of cross-cutting loyalties e similarly to the generation classes in the past. It also provides a means of effective interfacing between the formal and informal institutions of governance, offering potential partnerships to enhance local participation in environmental management.

Conclusion The Kuria informal associations constitute a powerful mechanism of local adaptation as they address the wider vulnerability context of the communities through incorporating historically relevant adaptation strategies. The Kuria institutional practices of communal pooling of work, money and other resources mitigated risks from the ongoing income diversification and facilitated greater social inclusion of the poor and marginal. Besides environmental stressors, the Kuria communities were subject to diverse politicaleconomic instabilities, resulting from past socialist state policies and later reforms of economic liberalization and power decentralization. These multiple stressors had an adverse effect particularly on certain gender and age categories which had been marginalized by the existing family, kin and community power hierarchies. Women and youth were especially vulnerable and therefore the main participants in the mutual help groups. By multiplying their resource entitlements and ties of reciprocity, the group members achieved greater success in their diversified activities as compared to the individuals who relied on family and kin only. The main organizational features of these local informal institutions that made them relevant for local adaptive capacity included their small-scale, flexible and relational organization that enabled to incorporate many diverse purposes and activity partners. Allowing for risk mitigation because of their flexible and cooperative organization, they made possible a continuous experimentation with diverse economic activities and modes of organization. Facilitating and regulating both cooperation and conflict,

5 The ward baraza assemblies could sometimes comprise all village representatives of a ward (which consisted of 10e12 villages), although most regularly meeting baraza’s were usually smaller than that, including a few villages, or were just single village-based. The size and scope of the assembly were determined by occasion and need.

133

the mutual help groups provided a welcoming venue for adaptive learning, negotiation, and innovation. Although containing many novel features and incorporating novel resources and modes of action, the groups were built on existing socio-cultural practices of cooperation, association, and dispute management. As these largely indigenous initiatives develop further linkages to formal sector institutions (including various government-led as well as non-governmental funds for small business development, training programs, local agricultural extension programs, etc.), the issues of social inequality may arise, if access to the new resources is channeled through existing power hierarchies. To avoid these challenges to local adaptive capacity, a thorough investigation of such indigenous adaptation mechanisms is vital when designing development projects and programs. For that reason, the issues of articulation and communication remain especially important between different organizational levels and scales. According to Agrawal (2010), civic institutions, particularly the informal ones, are most often involved in local adaptation, in some cases supplemented by and partnering with public sector institutions, whereas the role of private or market institutions tends to be relatively minor. That was also the case with Kuria: most frequently involved in local adaptation practices were informal civic institutions like work and cash contribution groups, clan councils and neighborhood assemblies. Some instances of collaboration of these with local government authorities and state courts could also be observed. There was little involvement, however, of the local economic initiatives with larger cooperative marketing societies for cash crops like coffee and cotton or formal savings-credit institutions. The restricted market access added to the instability of the economic environment. This study shows that the outcome of local adaptive strategies is defined by how livelihood assets and environmental problems are managed on local, small-scale levels of social organization. Both informal work groups as well as neighborhood councils with their vigilante units had emerged as an institutional response to growing local instabilities. The Kuria informal institutions managed to create a conducive environment for local initiative and participation, facilitating novel entitlements and enhancing the livelihood of their members. Built upon micro-level, relational dynamics, they facilitated flexible and non-hierarchical connections between different scales. That helped local people to accommodate new opportunities created by income diversification and enhance community resilience. While incorporating traditional patterns and historical adaptation mechanisms, the associations were a product of local social innovation, creating an enabling environment for further learning and experimentation. The success of external policy initiatives that seek to support local participation in climate vulnerability management therefore depends on adequate information about local, small-scale adaptation practices as well as support to their institutional integration. Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences (ICARUS), and the members of the ICARUS working group on Institutions, Networks and Participation for their constructive comments. The field research was partly funded by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Sachar Award of Brandeis University. References Adger, W. N. (2003). Social capital, collective action, and adaptation to climate change. Economic Geography, 79(4), 387e404.

134

D. Rodima-Taylor / Applied Geography 33 (2012) 128e134

Adger, W. N. (1999). Social vulnerability to climate change and extremes in coastal Vietnam. World Development, 27(2), 249e269. Agrawal, A. (2010). Local institutions and adaptation to climate change. In R. Mearns, & A. Norton (Eds.), Social dimensions of climate change: Equity and vulnerability in the warming world (pp. 173e198). Washington, DC: The World Bank. Agrawal, A. (2008). The role of local institutions in adaptation to climate change. Washington D.C: The World Bank. Ayers, J., & Forsyth, T. (2009). Community-based adaptation to climate change: Strengthening resilience through development, Vol. 51. www. environmentmagazine.org (4), pp. 24e30. Bakema-Boon, A. (1991). Gender differention in smallholder agriculture among Kuria of Tarime highlands. The Netherlands: Wageningen. Berry, S. (1989). Social institutions and access to resources. Africa, 59(1), 41e55. Duarte, M., Nadelman, R., Norton, P., Nelson, D., & Wolf, J. (2007). Adapting to climate change: understanding the social dimensions of vulnerability and resilience. Environment Matters: Annual Review, 24e27, July 2006eJune 2007. Ellis, F., & Mdoe, N. (2003). Livelihoods and rural poverty reduction in Tanzania. World Development, 31(8), 1367e1384. Eriksen, S., Aldunce, P., Bahinipati, C. S., D’Almeida, R., Molefe, J. I., Nhemachena, C., et al. (2011). When not every response to climate change is a good one: identifying principles for sustainable adaptation. Climate and Development, 3, 7e20. Eriksen, S., & Brown, K. (2011). Sustainable adaptation to climate change. Climate and Development, 3, 3e6. Eriksen, S., Brown, K., & Kelly, P. M. (2005). The dynamics of vulnerability: locating coping strategies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Geographical Journal, 171(4), 287e305. Gatchathi, F., & Eriksen, S. (2011). Gums and resins: the potential for supporting sustainable adaptation in Kenya’s Drylands. Climate and Development, 3, 59e70. Heltberg, R., Siegel, P. B., & Jorgensen, S. L. (2010). Social policies for adaptation to climate change. In R. Mearns, & A. Norton (Eds.), Social dimensions of climate change: Equity and vulnerability in the warming world (pp. 259e276). Washington, DC: The World Bank. Holling, C. S., Gunderson, L., & Ludwig, D. (2002). In quest of a theory of adaptive change. In L. Gunderson, & C. S. Holling (Eds.), Panarchy: Understanding transformations in human and natural systems (pp. 3e24). Washington, DC: Island Press, Center for Resource Economics. Leach, M., Mearns, R., & Scoones, I. (1999). Environmental entitlements: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World Development, 27(2), 225e267. Leadbeater, C. (2007). Social enterprise and social innovation: Strategies for the next ten years. Cabinet Office. Office of the Third Sector. Matango, R. (1976). Peasant and socialism in Tarime District. M.A. Thesis. Department of History, University of Dar es Salaam. Mbilinyi, M. (1999). Gender and microenterprise development in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Ministry of Women and Community Development. Mertz, O., Halsnaes, K., Olesen, J., & Rasmussen, K. (2009). Adaptation to climate change in developing countries. Environmental Management, 43, 743e752. Mniwaza, E., & Shauri, V. (2001). Review of the decentralization process and its impact on environmental and natural resources management in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Lawyers Environmental Action Team.

Moulaert, F., & Nussbaumer, J. (2005). Defining the social economy and its governance at the neighborhood level: a methodological reflection. Urban Studies, 42(11), 2071e2088. Moulaert, F., & Sekia, F. (2003). Territorial innovation models: a critical survey. Regional Studies, 37(3), 289e302. Mungongo, C. (1998). Coming full circle: Agriculture, non-farm activities and the resurgence of outmigration in Njombe District, Tanzania. Joint Working Paper, Vol. 26. Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam and Leiden: African Studies Center. Mwandosya, M., Nyenzi, B., & Luhanga, M. (1998). The assessment of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change impacts in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: The Center for Energy, Environment, Science and Technology. Mwiturubani, D. A. (2010). Climate change and access to water resources in the Lake Victoria Basin. In D. A. Mwiturubani, & J.-A. van Wyk (Eds.), Climate change and natural resources conflicts in Africa, Vol. 170 (pp. 63e77). Institute for Security Studies, Monograph. Nelson, V., & Stathers, T. (2009). Resilience, power, culture and climate: a case study from semi-arid Tanzania, and new research directions. Gender and Development, 17(1), 81e94. O’Brien, K., Quinlan, T., & Ziervogel, G. (2009). Vulnerability interventions in the context of multiple stressors: lessons from the Southern Africa vulnerability initiative (SAVI). Environmental Science and Policy, 12, 23e32. Omari, C. K. (1996). Market women in Northern Tanzania. In M. Swantz, & A. Tripp (Eds.), What went right in Tanzania: People’s response to directed development. Tanzania: Dar es Salaam University Press. Orindi, V., Kibona, E., & Moindi, D. (2006). Addressing climate change in the development process in Tanzania. In Ecopolicy Series, Vol. 18. African Center for Technology Studies. Reid, H., Alam, M., Berger, R., Cannon, T., Huq, S., & Milligan, A. (2009). Communitybased adaptation to climate change: an overview. Participatory Learning and Action, 60, 11e33. Ribot, J. C. (2010). Vulnerability does not fall from the sky: toward multi-scale propoor climate policy. In R. Mearns, & A. Norton (Eds.), Social dimensions of climate change: Equity and vulnerability in a warming world (pp. 47e74). Washington, DC: The World Bank. Rodima, D. (2007). ‘Sharing work and sharing money’: Cooperative work groups and personhood among the Kuria of Tanzania. Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, Massachusetts. Ruel, M. (1959). The social organization of the Kuria. A field work report. Cambridge University. Scott-Cato, M., & Hillier, J. (2010). How could we study climate-related social innovation? Applying Deleuzean philosophy to transition towns. Environmental Politics, 19(6), 869e887. Shayo, R. (2007). Locating women in the Tanzanian decentralization history: Progress, problems and future research issues. Occasional Paper 8. Nairobi: Center for Basic Research. Socio-Economic Profile, The United Republic of Tanzania. (2002). National bureau of statistics. Dar es Salaam: Regional Commissioner’s Office. Swantz, M., & Tripp, A. (1996). What went right in Tanzania: People’s response to directed development. Tanzania: Dar es Salaam University Press. Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S., & Kinzig, A. (2004). Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 9(2).