Drought-compounded stress and immune function in Kenyan pastoralist boys and girls occupying contrasting climate zones.

BACKGROUND AND AIM

We provide ethnographic, photovoice, and psychosocial stress data (food and water insecurity, potentially traumatic events, stress biomarkers) documenting the joys, hazards, and stressors of adolescents engaging in climate-sensitive pastoralist livelihoods in a global climate change hot spot. We aim to holistically capture socio-environmental relationships characterised by climate sensitive livelihoods and forms of precarity exacerbated by climate change.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

Qualitative and quantitative methods were integrated to understand the embodied toll of hazards that Samburu pastoralists faced based on a sample of 161 young people. Quantitatively, we tested for associations of psychosocial stressors with both psychological distress and cell-mediated immune function (assessed through differences in IgG antibodies to Epstein-Barr virus).

RESULTS

Qualitatively, young Samburu reported drought, food and water insecurity, wildlife encounters, and war exposure. Girls overall endorsed more posttraumatic stress symptoms, although boys reported relatively more stressors; girls overall and young people in the hotter subregion manifested more immune dysregulation.

CONCLUSION

In spite of important differences between climate subregions, the common elements throughout the Samburu pastoralist leanscape include food and water insecurity and overall precarity exacerbated by drought and climate change. Community-driven interventions are needed to reduce precarity for young people pursuing pastoralist livelihoods.