We know that central notions of market clearing prices, opportunity costs and economic incentives have serious limitations in the areas of interest to us in pastoralist development, e.g., water provision, health and humanitarian aid. Nor is this news to economists working in other substantive areas of high uncertainty and complexity in policy and management.
Fortunately, the notion of pastoralist systems as critical infrastructure and (some) pastoralists in these systems as reliability professionals is associated with its own kind of economics, termed here “reliability-seeking economics.”
This economics tells us that in addition to household livelihoods and community well-being, we should focus on the foundational economies in the pastoralist areas of interest; that these local and regional economies rest on formal government infrastructures for water, transportation, and other services—actually often the absence of said structures—but also include far less visible infrastructures especially important for local and real-time transactions (e.g., bush livestock markets, local security arrangements, seasonal and fallback water points); that these transactions and economies necessarily tailor higher-level government and NGO concerns about risks, trade-offs and priorities (local views about drought differ so often from those of outsiders); that this tailoring occurs at more granular levels than terms like “adaptable” and “flexible” convey in formal mission statements and administrative protocols of government and the donors; that these more granular levels also make visible what pastoralists will not trade-off in real time (forgoing forever livestock and grazing); and that recognizing all this is one very major way of building up and extending the economic expertise of government and donor professionals in pastoralist development well beyond a necessary “taking traditional knowledge into account.”
Much more can be said and recommended, but for the reasoning behind the above and an explanation of key terms, please see the broader rethinking of economics in light of critical infrastructures and high reliability in
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 