Socio-ecological Drivers of Movements into and out of African Woodlands

Abstract

Abstract

Spatio-temporal variability and mobility characterize socio-ecological systems in large regions of tropical Africa, especially in savanna ecosystems. Hence, in rural areas people have adapted to climatic variability with mobility as a livelihood strategy. While land tenure systems introduced during the colonial times restrict mobility, climate change and economic drivers are likely to increase the need for mobility as an adaptation strategy. The extent to which people adapt to economic, cultural and climate change through movement will have consequences for practices of resource valuation and valorization (the practice of transforming nature into objects with market values), recalibrating questions of sustainability in these socio-ecological systems. Therefore, there is a need to understand the complex interactions of ecological, social, economic and cultural factors. Understanding the processes, their dynamics and interlinkages is only possible in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches involving stakeholders from the region. There is already a good understanding how socio-ecological pressures reshape mobility landscapes in Africa but comparative studies on how new patterns and processes of mobility reshape land tenure systems and on the valorization of resources as well as the underlying normative and ontological fabric (practices of valuation) are still lacking.
Our aim is to address these knowledge gaps in a three-step approach. The first step is a multivariate statistical scoping of the process interlinkages using existing data and data gathered in the project. Already during this stage we work inter- and transdisciplinarily. The identified parameters will be used in a movement model inspired by Darcy´s law. The model output will be continuously discussed in transdisciplinary meetings and discussion, and based on them adjusted, as there is an increasing acknowledgement that the relations between value, values, and natures are contested. The model will then be used to project movement under storylines representing different climatic, cultural and economic pathways.