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

众所周知，严重干旱、洪水和疾病流行等极端事件会导致重大的社会、经济、政治和环境变革。其影响可能包括对土地利用和生计模式的新限制、对关键资源的获取途径的改变、对生物多样性的影响以及长期的公共卫生问题。累积起来，往往会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转型，而其他类似程度的极端事件却不会。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，极端事件会导致变化？本研究的重点是坦桑尼亚北部马赛社区对2008-2009年灾难性干旱的反应。当地居民称，这是他们记忆中最严重的一次干旱，促使大批牲畜和人口从肯尼亚南部和坦桑尼亚北部迁移到坦桑尼亚北部邻近地区，牲畜大量死亡。干旱之后，土地利用和传统制度和做法发生了重大变化，包括对谁可以获得至关重要的水和牧场资源的前所未有的限制。研究人员将探究为什么这些变革性的反应发生在这次特殊的干旱期间和之后，而不是发生在近几十年来同样或更严重的干旱之后。这项研究将包括民族志实地调查和调查，涉及干旱期间移民的发送端和接收端马赛人村庄的家庭和村领导。这项研究旨在揭示对最近干旱的反应与过去不同的方式和原因；干旱的影响是如何经历一系列阶段的；以及一个领域的经验、决策和创新如何影响其他领域，并最终影响整个社会生态系统。自20世纪90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过去对危机的反应有了深刻的理解和详细的基线数据，以及与当地社区的关系，这将有助于确保准确评估人们如何以及为什么会像他们那样应对干旱，以及改变当地做法可能带来的影响。在这种情况下，我们对极端事件的情况有了很好的了解，并且可以确定和跟踪地方一级的过程，了解对极端事件的反应，将直接影响到规划工作，以应对未来气候事件和其他问题的影响，无论它们在哪里发生。

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.