This time around, even the husky local camels are already dying, and the worst is yet to come. Kenya's poorest districts are the ones where today's indigenous peoples were confined to ghettoes by laissez faire colonial policy. But exploiting them has been constrained by a combination of poor infrastructure, restrictive laws, a lack of services, and the social prejudice engendered by separation. Isolation has bred war parties that roam the land with the unpredictability of rain-bearing clouds. As towns grow, degradation of the peri-urban fringe paves the way for expansion.
Tree cover improves within the new pastoralist settlements even as it is denuded without.
Tree planting, unless for generating future income, is unlikely to solve the environmental crisis. The Borana recall two famines of decades past by the blueflies that swarmed over the cattle, both dead and alive. Perhaps the system-level impact of the jilali , underscoring the national crisis of planning and resource management, will be reforms that promote the comparative advantage of cultural diversity, like the Shungwayan example. Kenyans, despite some parties' best efforts to prove otherwise, are poor tribalists simply because, over the long-run, the environment selects against it. The drought has exposed the futility of petty local agendas.