New book: The Omo-Turkana Basin Cooperation for Sustainable Water Management
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OTuRN affiliates Jenny Hodbod, Jed Stevenson, and Mercy Fekadu Mulugeta have contributed to a new book 'The Omo-Turkana Basin Cooperation for Sustainable Water Management', edited by Jonathan Lautze, Matthew McCartney, and Julie Gibson from the DAFNE project. The book provides a comprehensive examination of water resource management in the Omo-Turkana Basin, linking together biophysical, socioeconomic, policy, institutional and governance issues in a solutions-oriented manner.
Our chapter, 'Resilience dynamics in a rapidly changing social-ecological system: shifting inequalities in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley', assesses changes in the structure and function of the Lower Omo social-ecological system over time using a social-ecological resilience framing. The objective is to demonstrate the dynamics of the system and equity dimensions within past regimes, to give context to the current regime and its equity challenges. Our analysis shows there have been three major regime shifts in the Lower Omo in the past 150 years, each initiated by relatively rapid actions by external actors, usually the state. Local communities have utilized diverse forms of livelihood and broad social networks to adapt to new regimes and maintain distinctive cultural identities and effective sovereignty over their territories. However, the most recent regime shift, associated with the Gibe III dam, has led to a landscape-scale transformation that has potentially pushed communities downstream of the dam to the limits of their resilience.
