CLIMATE CHANGE STRESS ON PASTORAL LIVELIHOODS IN NAROK COUNTY, KENYA

The pastoral communities are groups of people who depend on livestock or the sale of livestock products for most of their livelihoods. In Kenya they inhabit mostly Arid and Semi-Arid Lands’ (ASALs) and thus rely mainly on rainfall for water and pasture, lack of which poses greater challenges to their livelihoods. The conceptualization of this paper is based on the need to establish the impact of climate change on the pastoral community of Narok County. That despite the great potential of Pastoralism, contributing to the community’s livelihoods, it has been adversely affected by climate change related shocks. The author, with an intention of conducting a face to face interview sampled 415 pastoralists by a multi stage sampling technique in Narok County. Data collection was done using both observation and questionnaire methods. The questionnaire administered to the participants pointed out such impacts as loss of livestock; livestock disease outbreak as well as famine as the main impacts of climate change in the study area. Notably, while pastoralists lease out land to private conservancies, paddock the land, reduce the size of livestock, and construct water harvesting schemes at the community level during extreme events; this has not made better the adversities faced. In giving hope to the community, this paper is intended to be an eye opener to policy makers and relevant institutions in establishing coping strategies to ensure food sustainability amidst climate change challenges.