Learning from Stakeholders’ Adaptations to Environmental Change and Variability

Abstract

There is much to learn from stakeholders’ adaptations in seeking a new paradigm of dryland development. The case is based on eleven paradoxes: (1) specialised scientific knowledge, formerly accepted as the guide to policy, now needs to engage in partnerships with local stakeholders and to aim for interdisciplinary understanding of complex systems; (2) the population factor, formerly blamed for land degradation (‘desertification’) is now known to work in more complex ways, and positive outcomes can be associated with high densities; (3) climate scientists focus on models for predicting trends while dryland peoples set their priority on managing rainfall variability; (4) recent analyses suggest that demand factors have been underrated, as opposed to supply constraints, in achieving food security; (5) the policy choice between promoting small-scale family farming or large scale commercial agriculture is unresolved and has enormous implications; (6) natural resources are frequently blamed for conflict in drylands, but it has more complex system-wide causes; (7) the emergence of new and growing markets in drylands challenges the assumption that they have little to sell; (8) protecting biodiversity is now a global priority, for good reasons, whereas GM crops and new technologies threaten to destroy or reduce it; (9) technologies aimed at maximising production need to be re-oriented towards sustainability; (10) in a free market system, promoting investment is a priority and needs better analysis; and (11) even as agriculture climbs the development agenda once more, spontaneous income diversification out of agriculture (or complementary to it) attracts more attention from dryland peoples. These paradoxes are explored through the illustration of northern Nigerian experience. A more contextual paradigm of dryland management should include all stakeholders and promote greater local ownership of the policy process. Key words: Adaptation, development opportunities, dryland systems, environmental change, Nigeria, transition.