Resilience and collapse: histories, ecologies, conflicts and identities in the Baringo-Bogoria basin, Kenya

The concept of resilience is now applied across the natural and social sciences to provide a means of examining and understanding adaptation and transformation over a longer time period, in response to environmental, economic, cultural, or political shocks or adverse events. This essay introduces a collection of 10 studies that analyse resilience in the context of the Baringo-Bogoria basin, a predominantly savannah ecological zone in Kenya's northern Rift Valley. Framed by the adaptive cycle model, the studies span a history of 200 years, but also detail current challenges to the social-ecological system of the region. Resilience has allowed the communities of Baringo-Bogoria to adapt and transform in order to maintain production systems dominated by cattle pastoralism, with intensive agriculture in niche locations. The authors suggest that the most recent challenges confronting the peoples of this region – intensified conflicts, mounting poverty driven by demographic pressures, and dramatic ecological changes brought by invasive species – have contributed to a collapse in essential elements of the specialised cattle production system, requiring a re-orientation of the social-ecological system.