The impacts of conflict on household coping strategies: evidence from Turkana and Kitui Districts in Kenya

Conflict and violence are important features of many rural environments in East Africa but little is known about how they affect patterns of coping and adaptive behaviour. This paper considers the influence of conflict and violence on household strategies for coping with climate stress in dryland sites in Kenya. Conflict and violence severely affect coping stategies as well as household capacities and options to manage climate stress. However, people also adapt their livelihoods to the threat of violence as a way of reducing vulnerability over the long term. Adapting livelihoods to violence is critical to being able to effectively cope with climate stress in environments that are insecure.