Coping With Drought in Turkana County, Kenya

LOWARENGAK, TURKANA, KENYA, 10 OCTOBER 2014: Village defence man Steven Lajore, 27, is from an internally displaced Turkana community who have been moved off their land by Dassanech tribesman who raided their cattle and killed their people, Turkana, Kenya. These Turkana now practise fishing as opposed to their traditional pastoralism as their main means of subsistence. Steven is seen guarding the boats from Dassanech raids. The Dassenech have in fact come illegally over the Ethiopian border into Turkana land. They were pressured by sugar cane farms on the lower Omo river which is the main tributary for Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world. These sugar cane farms robbed the Dassenech of tradional grazing land and water rights and so they moved over the border into Turkana territory and ongoing conflict is the result. This pattern is likely to increase as Ethiopia's Gibe 3 dam comes online next year. This will reduce the flow of the Omo river to one fifth of its current size. This will decimate the fertile flood plain in the region and the tribesmen along the Omo will fight for diminishing resources as a result. This conflict will be likely to continue in Kenya's Turkana region as all around the lake hundreds of thousands of tribespeople will find themselves competing for less and grazing, fishing and clean water sources. A series of droughts have reduced most of these pastoralists to fishing as their chief source of subsistence due to huge cattle and goat deaths. The massively reduced flow of the Omo, source of 90% of Lake Turkana's water, could have a devastating effect on this food and income source. The Ethiopian government has conducted no Environmental Impact Assessment for their dams and has yet to respond to these issues. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage.)