Assessing the predictability of future livelihood strategies of pastoralists in semi-arid Morocco under climate change

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Abstract

This study assesses the predictability of future livelihood strategies of transhumant pastoralists in semi-arid Morocco. A decrease in precipitation due to climate change will likely threaten their traditional livelihood strategy. We examine whether the pastoralists explicitly prefer certain alternative strategies or if their reactions will be contingent. Our analysis uses standardized interviews focussing on two aspects: firstly, which resources are necessary for the pastoralists to be able to choose a livelihood strategy? Secondly, to what degree are expectations of well-being satisfied by alternative strategies? To assign levels of predictability to all investigated strategies, we analyze the interviews using simple methods of partial order theory. We find that under perceived precipitation scarcity, 38% of pastoralists would explicitly opt for sedentarity and localized pastoralism as alternative strategy. Unclear preferences are given for 25% of the cases. Considering a policy scenario of enhanced access to education and capital, our analysis indicates commercial pastoralism as dominant alternative. However, such a scenario would increase the share of unclear preferences to 43%, which increases the likelihood of a contingent development. The method we propose can be considered as a mathematical basis for the concept of historical contingency.

Highlights

► Assessing predictability of future decision pathways in a socio-ecological setting. ► Mathematical basis for the concept of historical contingency. ► 25% of investigated pastoralists in Morocco show indetermined characteristics. ► Increasing availability of additional resources decreases predictability.

Introduction

In our study we assess the predictability of future livelihood strategies of transhumant pastoralists in semi-arid Morocco. The region of interest is likely to experience considerable alterations in precipitation during the 21st century [1], leading to modifications of livelihood strategies and agricultural techniques. The extent to which livelihood strategies will be modified is unclear, since socio-ecological systems are traditionally considered as very difficult to predict. Reasons for poor predictability are a high complexity of internal structures and involvement of partly unpredictable human agency (e.g. [2], [3]).

Given these constraints on predictability, social sciences mostly investigate socio-ecological systems from a historical perspective. Random events, which strongly impact the subsequent development of these systems, are considered as so-called historical contingencies which lead to path-dependence [4], [5], [6], [7]. Historical contingencies are seen as an irreducible gap in the causal narrative [5] and therefore principally prevent valid predictions about socio-ecological systems.

In contrast to social sciences, physical sciences are very much oriented towards giving predictions. If natural processes are sufficiently understood, limits to predictions within physical models arise mainly from deficiencies in measurement accuracy. For example, chaotic systems can be regarded to a certain extent as unpredictable, since infinitesimal deviations in initial conditions can completely alter future states. In such systems, accuracy of predictions decreases towards a certain time-horizon. After that time-horizon an exact calculation of future states is unfeasible [8]. Lack of predictability also relates to concepts of inherent randomness [9] or deep uncertainty [10], where predictability is restricted because the system is irreducible to a deterministic one. Despite these principal limits, physical assessments of socio-ecological systems aim at giving valid predictions in order to enable rational decision making by actors within the system or by agents which control boundary conditions. However, it is disputable whether or to which degree socio-ecological systems can be described by physical concepts [11], [12].

Considering these different perspectives of social and physical sciences, an integrated assessment of socio-ecological systems holds considerable challenges for the scientific community. For instance, decision making within such systems which has relied too much on physically motivated predictions often has failed due to excessive confidence in such predictions [13]. On the other hand, using a historical perspective for planning is not able to include new social and environmental situations such as technological advances and climate change. Planning and rational decision making is therefore mainly constrained to adaptive methods which are designed to be able to include unforeseen elements during the run of their implementation [10]. However, adaptation of societies to altered environmental conditions may require early investments. For the planning and realization of these investments, decision makers benefit from knowing the degree to which a specific socio-ecological system can be considered as predictable and how the predictability changes in response to technological and environmental developments.

Here, we present and apply a mathematically formalized way of investigating the predictability of future livelihood options of a pastoral society in southern Morocco. We assume that contingency mainly arises from the pastoralists' decisions. For instance, facing decreasing precipitation, pastoralists will behave more predictable if they have clear preferences about alternative agricultural techniques and alternative livelihood strategies. To assess the level of predictability of the pastoralists' decisions, we use standardized interviews based on a multi-criteria ranking to analyze the background of relevant preferences of the pastoralists. Predictable parts of expected behavior will then be separated from unpredictable ones by using simple methods of partial order theory.

Section snippets

Study region and research questions

Fieldwork for our study was performed in summer 2009 in the upper Drâa catchment in the High Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco (Ouarzazate Province). Being part of the Moroccan “migration belt”, 65% of households in the Drâa valley depend on remittances from migrants [14]. The region is characterized by a semi-arid to arid climate [15]. Traditional agricultural techniques allow coping with low average values of precipitation together with a high variability, by using a mixed system of

Results

In our evaluation, we examine all 16 interviews on the impact of less precipitation (base scenario). To investigate possible policy options, we additionally examine the same precipitation scenario together with an experimentally higher availability of education and capital.

Methodology

The presented analysis may be scrutinized in a fourfold manner: firstly, one might ask what is new and cannot or has not been examined with existing methods? Secondly, are there explicit or implicit assumptions hidden behind the method? Thirdly, how to validate the model? Fourthly, are there non-trivial insights generated through the results?

Concerning the first point, the novel aspect of our method is to distinguish between predictable and unpredictable outcomes in mathematical formal terms

Conclusions

We present a novel method to assess the predictability of future decision pathways of socio-ecological systems in a mathematically formalized way. For the application to semi-arid Morocco, we use 16 interviews of transhumant pastoralists. Due to the relatively small number of interviews, the explanatory power of our results might be limited. However, we can show that there are livelihood strategies which are definitely preferred over others by the pastoralists and that many pastoralists are

Acknowledgments

First of all, we want to thank all of our interview partners whose open-hearted hospitality we greatly appreciated. Second, we would like to thank the interpreters Redouane Ouhmouch and Abdelaziz Labdi for their professional work. We thank two anonymous reviewers and Jochem Marotzke, Dallas Murphy, and several students of the IMPRS-ESM Hamburg for their comments, which substantially improved the explanatory power of this paper. From Michael Hauhs we picked up the idea of separating determinism

Korbinian P. Freier is a PhD student at the International Max Planck Research School for Earth System Modelling and the Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change in Hamburg. He grew up as the son of a forester in Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps and graduated in Geoecology from the University of Bayreuth. His research interests are centered on the synopsis of social and ecological systems and on how to create robust knowledge from interwoven environments.

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    Korbinian P. Freier is a PhD student at the International Max Planck Research School for Earth System Modelling and the Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change in Hamburg. He grew up as the son of a forester in Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps and graduated in Geoecology from the University of Bayreuth. His research interests are centered on the synopsis of social and ecological systems and on how to create robust knowledge from interwoven environments.

    Rainer Bruggemann received his PhD on quantum chemistry in 1977 at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich. He is now working at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin. He was involved in risk assessment of nuclear waste disposal sites and is one of the authors of the software “E4CHEM”, which models the exposure of chemicals in the environment. He is a lecturer at several universities. He applies partial order theory in environmental sciences and chemistry and has published several books. Rainer Bruggemann initialized in 1998 the workshop-series “Partial order in environmental sciences and chemistry” (see http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/hdf/index.htm).

    Jürgen Scheffran is a professor at the Institute for Geography of Hamburg University and head of the Research Group Climate Change and Security in the KlimaCampus Excellence Initiative. Until summer 2009 he held positions at the University of Illinois in the Departments of Political Science and Atmospheric Sciences, the ACDIS Program, and the Center for Advanced BioEnergy Research. After his physics PhD at Marburg University he worked at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. His research interests include: energy security and climate change; complex systems analysis and human–environment interactions; technology assessment and international security.

    Dr Manfred Finckh is a geoecologist by training and working in the lab of Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology of Plants at the University of Hamburg. His main interest is the impact of land use on ecosystem integrity and dynamics. From 1992 to 2000 he coordinated projects on temperate forest ecosystems of Chile. From 2000 to 2010 he monitored vegetation dynamics in southern Morocco, with focus on land use pressure and climate variability. Since 2010 he is involved in the establishment of a “Regional Science Service Centre for Adaptation to Climate Change and Sustainable Land Management in Southern Africa”.

    Uwe A. Schneider is a resource economist with a background in agricultural science. He grew up on a small farm in the Eastern Ore Mountains of Germany. Uwe graduated from Humboldt University, Berlin and received a PhD from Texas A&M University. Most of his research focuses on integrated assessments of land use and land use change. He has large expertise in mathematical programming with GAMS and developed, coordinated, and supervised several optimization models of different scales in the realms of agriculture, forestry, bioenergy, and fisheries.

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