Abstract

This chapter examines diversification into fishing by pastoral and agropastoral households and communities in Kenya and South Sudan and how and when this diversification overlaps with sedentarization. Various factors, including climatic events, conflict, privatization, development schemes, and national policies, can result in a decrease in the strategic mobility that is central to pastoral success and resilience. Diversification of economic activities may also cause households or some household members to settle, and, although limited, the data on the impacts of settling show mostly negative results for food security and nutrition. This chapter examines fishing as a specific form of diversification that correlates with settling by formerly nomadic or semi-nomadic communities. Data from two areas of Unity State in South Sudan illustrate the role of conflict and displacement in the shift to fishing as both a survival strategy and a form of economic diversification. Narratives from Turkana communities on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana in Marsabit County, Kenya, illustrate how fishing can serve as a short-term response to the loss of livestock or a longer-term adaptation to take advantage of lucrative opportunities. I argue that many individuals and households retain pastoral identities and aspirations even after losing livestock and moving into fixed-place livelihood systems.