Abstract
This chapter traces the evolution of Kenya’s drought management system from its origins in the 1980s to the present day. The system is now the responsibility of the National Drought Management Authority which was established in 2011. The creation of a permanent and specialist institution in government to manage drought-related risks was the culmination of many years of work by many actors, both within the government and outside it. A critical outstanding challenge remains the permanent availability of contingency finance to ensure timely and appropriate response to the earliest signs of drought stress. This chapter draws heavily on discussions that took place during a meeting in Turkana, northern Kenya, in August 2013 between the pioneers of Kenya’s drought management system and the staff and partners of the NDMA.
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Notes
- 1.
Two clarifications may be helpful. First, it is understood that a ‘drought’ cannot become a ‘famine’; the two are different phenomena. The legal wording is generally interpreted to mean that while drought is an inevitable and natural event, its worst effects can be avoided. Second, the term ‘mitigation’ is used in its everyday sense of avoiding a problem, and not as used under the climate change regime (i.e. of reducing greenhouse gas emissions).
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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Oduor, J., Swift, J., Birch, I. (2014). The Evolution of Kenya’s Drought Management System. In: Singh, A., Zommers, Z. (eds) Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8598-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8598-3_11
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