From Environmental Crisis to Peaceful Adaptation: Governance Capacity and Environmental Peace Governance in the Horn of Africa

Abstract

Environmental crisis is increasingly treated as a security and development concern, yet comparable ecological pressures do not produce uniform political outcomes. This article asks why recurrent drought, flooding, land degradation, water scarcity and pasture decline contribute to violent insecurity in some pastoral borderlands while being absorbed through negotiated adaptation in others. Drawing on a mixed-methods comparative study of Turkana County in Kenya, Fantalle District in Ethiopia and the Abyei Area on the Sudan–South Sudan border, the article develops environmental peace governance as a multilevel account of how institutions translate ecological pressure into political outcomes. The evidence combines key-informant interviews, focus-group discussions, a broader perception survey, field observations, institutional documents and process tracing. Across the three cases, environmental crisis disrupts livelihoods, redistributes mobility and concentrates claims on land, water and pasture. The decisive variation lies in governance: institutions are more effective where they can translate warning into action, regulate access and mobility, coordinate formal and customary authority, adapt rules and sustain local legitimacy. Turkana shows partial institutional buffering, Fantalle uneven implementation, and Abyei the effects of contested authority. The article argues that environmental policy in fragile borderlands should be evaluated not only by formal policy presence but by the practical capacity to convert environmental information and resource pressure into legitimate, coordinated and adaptive decisions.