Collaborative Research: Event Ecology and Extreme Events as Transformative Factors in Pastoral Socio-Ecological Systems

极端事件，如严重的干旱、洪水和疾病流行，会导致重大的社会、经济、政治和环境变革。这些影响可能包括对土地使用和生计模式的新限制，对关键资源的获取方式的改变，对生物多样性的影响以及长期的公共卫生问题。 累积起来，往往对地方和国家经济产生深远的影响。 然而，结果因情况而异，令人惊讶的是，为什么一些极端事件会导致社会变革，而其他类似规模的事件则不会。 在这个项目中，一组人类学家提出了这样一个问题：在什么条件下，极端事件会导致转变？这项研究的重点是坦桑尼亚北方马赛社区对2008-2009年毁灭性干旱的反应。 当地人声称这是人们记忆中最严重的干旱，刺激了牲畜和人口从肯尼亚南部和坦桑尼亚北方大规模迁移到坦桑尼亚北方的邻近地区，牲畜损失惨重。干旱之后，土地使用以及传统机构和做法发生了重大变化，包括对允许谁获得水和牧场等关键资源施加了以前看不见的限制。 研究人员将探讨为什么这些变革性的反应发生在这场特殊的干旱期间和之后，而不是在最近几十年同样严重或更严重的干旱之后。 这项研究将需要进行人种学实地考察和调查，调查对象包括干旱期间作为移徙始发地和接收地的马赛族村庄的家庭和村长。 该研究旨在揭示如何以及为什么对最近的干旱的反应与过去不同;干旱的影响如何通过一系列阶段进行;以及一个领域的经验，决策和创新如何影响其他领域，最终影响整个社会生态系统。 自1990年代中期以来，调查人员一直在这一领域进行研究，因此对传统生计模式和以往对危机的反应以及与当地社区的关系有着深刻的了解和详细的基线数据，这将有助于确保准确评估人们如何和为什么对干旱作出反应，以及改变当地做法可能产生的影响。在这种情况下，了解对极端事件的反应-在这种情况下，情况已得到充分了解，地方一级的过程可以查明，并在时间和空间上加以跟踪-将对规划工作产生直接影响，以科普未来气候事件的影响和其他可能在任何地方发生的问题。

Extreme events, such as severe droughts, flooding, and disease epidemics, are known to result in major social, economic, political, and environmental transformations. The effects may include new constraints on land use and livelihood patterns, altered access to crucial resources, impacts on biodiversity, and long term public health problems. Cumulatively, there are often far-reaching consequences for local and national economies. However, outcomes vary from case to case and surprisingly little is known about why some extreme events result in societal transformation while others of similar magnitude do not. In this project, a team of anthropologists asks the question: Under what conditions do transformations occur as a result of an extreme event? This research focuses on the response of Maasai communities in northern Tanzania to the devastating drought of 2008-2009. The local people claim this drought to be the worst in living memory, stimulating massive migration of livestock and people from southern Kenya and northern Tanzania into neighboring areas in northern Tanzania, with dramatic loss of livestock. The drought was followed by significant changes in land use and traditional institutions and practices, including previously unseen restrictions on who is allowed access to the crucial resources of water and pasture. The researchers will probe why these transformative responses occurred during and following this particular drought but not following previous droughts in recent decades that were equally or more severe. The research will entail ethnographic fieldwork and surveys involving households and village leaders in Maasai villages that were on both the sending and receiving ends of the migration during the drought. The research is designed to reveal how and why responses to the recent drought differed from the past; how the impact of the drought proceeded through a series of phases; and how experiences, decisions, and innovations in one area influenced other areas and, ultimately, the social-ecological system as a whole. The investigators have done research in this area since the mid-1990s and thus have a deep understanding of and detailed baseline data on traditional livelihood patterns and past responses to crises, as well as relationships with local communities that will help ensure accurate assessment of how and why people responded to the drought as they did and what the implications of changing local practices are likely to be. Understanding the responses to extreme events in this case where the situation is well understood and the local-level processes can be identified and followed over time and space will have a direct bearing on planning efforts to cope with the effects of future climatic events and other problems wherever they may occur.