The multi-organization group Security in Mobility revealed in its report that the telltale effects of climate change are now becoming more evident in the region, particularly in the Maasai, Karamoja Uganda, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. These places now find increasing incidences of migration and conflict over resources.
Security in Mobility is composed of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations Environment Programme, International Organization for Migration and the Institute for Security Studies.
Jeanine Cooper, a humanitarian affairs coordinator, said pastoral communities are constantly endangered due to a combination of factors including environmental degradation, resource-based conflicts, changing land tenures, poor governance and restrictive cross-border policies.
Mr. Bowden said migrating communities that cross borders to flee the effects of climate change need assistance. He recommended that cross-border collaboration with other African regions be forged to address pastoralist issues.
In 2009, almost 10 million people in the region suffered extensive droughts which left them at risk of starvation.
Bote Bora, an 80-year-old pastoralist from Isiolo town in Kenya, said the rainfall pattern has been unpredictable and there is a movement of pastoralists to urban centers such as Nairobi and Uganda.
«In my 80 years living as a pastoralist it has never been like this,” he said. “The few animals we have that have survived the drought are plagued by new diseases that we do not know about. Our livestock is dying and we do not know why. We are even afraid to eat some of the livestock as we fear the diseases might be transferred to humans,» he continued.
