Environmental Risks and Climate Change: Migration and Community Resilience in Eastern Sub-Saharan Africa – IGAD Region

In recent times, the concept of resilience has been joined by the concept of community resilience with the aim of describing the capacity of communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances of a social, environmental and political nature; however, the definition of this concept is variable, which entails complications for its understanding, academic and especially practical use. Starting from an understanding of the complexity associated with global climate change from a geographical perspective, this thesis seeks to highlight some of the most problematic factors that call into question the already precarious balances on which territories and the communities that inhabit them rest. Specifically, it will start from what has been defined as the climate-migration-conflict nexus, a set of interaction dynamics in which human action, in its different spatial, economic and political configurations, and the surrounding environmental conditions are the protagonists. The spatial and social consequences of this intricate nexus bring to light multiple questions, first and foremost what are the most appropriate ways to respond to the challenges it creates. In order to try and answer this question, it was deemed useful to adopt a particular point of view that sees resilience both as a precise epistemological approach functional to this purpose, and as a valid concept from which to interpret reality and endowed with a prescriptive function, but also as a real tool available to geography capable of contributing concretely to the activation of specific practices for the reduction of social and territorial vulnerability. The aim of this research is to shed light on the concept of resilience, and more specifically on that of community resilience, so that its use can be functional to geographical analysis and allow consideration of the multiplicity of dimensions that a territorial approach to the issue needs. Through an overview of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) region, including political and social aspects, and a more in-depth territorial analysis of the area in which the research activities were conducted, it will be understood how community resilience can be harnessed, in a context characterised by dynamics attributable to the climate-migration-conflict nexus, in order to investigate, understand and address the evolution of local territorialisation processes, both from a diachronic and synchronic perspective, giving space to the needs highlighted by the most vulnerable social groups and safeguarding the peculiarities of the social and territorial contexts considered. The first part of the thesis hosts an overview of the debate on the relationships between the implications of global climate change, resilience and territorialisation processes; this section also proposes a precise interpretation and conceptualisation of the concept of community resilience that makes explicit its fundamental relationship with territorialisation processes. The second chapter of the research is dedicated to the description of the regional context studied and focuses particularly, but not exclusively, on the configurations that the implications of global climate change determine; the focus moves from the international scale of the IGAD region to the local scale of Turkana County. The third chapter includes a section dedicated to the data collection methods used, a brief description of the research field where data were collected between October and December 2023, and a final section including presentations and analysis of the data collected in the light of the aspects and concepts introduced in the first chapter. The fourth chapter is devoted to the discussion and presents the research results, this section provides insights about the extent to which the theoretical assumptions and conceptual proposals put forward in the first chapter are consistent with what was observed in the field; this chapter contains also the conclusive remarks. The thesis consists of an additional appendix section designed as guidelines and intends to offer a series of useful hints for geographic research in the field in contexts characterised by dynamics ascribable to the climate-migration-conflict nexus, highlighting research tools and methodologies capable of supporting data collection activities useful for the adoption of a community resilience perspective; similarly, some of the precautions to be taken in the event that one intends to operate in these same contexts with the aim of strengthening and developing virtuous processes of community resilience through cooperation projects on a local scale will be highlighted.