What I want to do here is contextualize a recent East African drought differently in order to show what remains a catastrophe has some different but very important policy and management implications when reframed.
I
Start with debates over periodizing World Wars I and II. It’s one thing to adopt the conventional periodization of the latter as 1939 – 1945. It is another thing to read in detail how 1931 – 1953 was a protracted period of conflicts and wars unfolding to and from a central paroxysm in Europe.
In the latter perspective, the December 1941 – September 1945 paroxysm, with the Shoah and the frontline carnage, was embedded in a much longer series of large regional wars. These in turn were less preludes to each other than unfolding processes that were indeed worldwide. (Think: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the late 1940s Dutch war in Indonesia, the French war in Indochina from the late 1940s through early 1950s, and the Korean War, among regional conflicts across the globe.)
II
Now reframe the recent extended East Africa drought as one such paroxysm, with drought-related conflicts leading up to and following from it. What follows from such a construction?
Current emergency management terminology about this or that “longer-term recovery” would be considerably problematized when the longer term is one drought unfolding into another drought and then again. Immediate emergency response would look considerably less proactive when embedded in a process of recurring response always before the next disaster
III
What does this mean practically? What does it mean to frame this recent East Africa drought as a paroxysm that extends both the spatial and temporal terms of “recurring drought response and recovery across East Africa”?
Clearly one major issue is government budgets (in the plural) for their recurrent operations in pastoralist areas. Or more negatively, you’re looking at the recurrent cost crises of East Africa governments–which, to my mind, far too few critics analyze as they seem more fixated on the obvious failures of capital development projects and programs for pastoralists.
My own view is that you have to have recurrent operating budget already in place in order to get recurring drought response and recovery more effective on the ground over time.
IV
Anything else?
One of the major reasons why “recurring drought response and recovery” is better part of government’s recurrent rather than capital budget is because pastoralists give ongoing priority to the real-time prevention of other disasters from happening along the way and the need for their improvisational behavior to do that.
Yes, the government budget for staff operations falls woefully short in helping pastoralists do so, but it is government operations we are talking about, not the log-frame of a development project.
Source
Buchanan, A. (2023). Globalizing the Second World War. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies 258: 246-281.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 