Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669

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Global Environmental Change

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Adaptive lives. Navigating the global food crisis in a changing climate

Jonas Østergaard Nielsen a,*, Henrik Vigh b
a
Waterworlds Research Centre, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark
b
Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Human adaptation to climate change is gaining increasing academic as well as political attention.
Received 30 August 2011 Understanding how and what people around the world adapt to is, however, difficult. Climate change is
Received in revised form 20 March 2012 often, if not always, only one of a multiplicity of exposures perforating local communities. In Biidi 2, a
Accepted 21 March 2012
small Sahelian village in northern Burkina Faso, climate variability have had a great influence on
Available online 8 April 2012
inhabitants’ lives since the major droughts of the early 1970s and 1980s. Tracing the intertwinement of
drought, diminishing agricultural production and the need to buy food, this article explores how villagers
Keywords:
attempt to attract development projects and negotiate with political parties in order to negate the impact
Climate change adaptation
of the global food crisis on their livelihoods. In doing so the article attempts to show how adaptation to
Social navigation
The global food crisis climate variability is related to multiple, intersecting processes, and in this specific case is a matter of
Sahel navigating changing socioeconomic factors. Using recent theory from social anthropology, adaptation is
Burkina Faso explored as a matter of social navigation. It is suggested that this theoretical approach might help nuance
and elucidate how, and to what, local people around the world adapt.
ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The question of what people are adapting to has gained
increasing attention in academic as well as policy spheres. For
developing countries the impacts of climate change are seen as
requiring particularly significant adaptation. This adaptation is,
however, played out in many different sectors of society, which
makes isolating, or simply locating, observed or expected climate
stimuli as drivers of human actions very difficult (e.g. Adger et al.,
2007; Mertz et al., 2009; Patt et al., 2010). A major reason for this is
the complex interplay of different driving forces for development
and environmental change (Adger et al., 2009). Double (O’Brien and
Leichenko, 2000), triple (Reenberg, 2009) and multiple (Belliveau
et al., 2006) exposures such as globalisation, population increases,
and various policy and economic incentives and barriers intermingle
with cultural and individual concerns and environmental change
when particular strategies are either chosen or rejected.
Before climate change became an important object of scientific
study and international concern, the Sahel region came to
represent what Raynaut (1997) called the quintessence of a major
environmental emergency after the severe episodes of drought and
food deficiency witnessed in the region in the 1970s and 1980s.
Even though Sahelian populations were accustomed to climate
variability (e.g. Rain, 1999) these droughts became significant not
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 35 32 34 64; fax: +45 35 32 39 40.
E-mail address: Jonas.nielsen@anthro.ku.dk (J.&. Nielsen).
only due to their severity, but also because they ‘‘prompted
profound economic and political reforms and extensive interna-
tional assistance’’ (Batterbury and Warren, 2001, p. 1). In Biidi 2, a
small Sahelian village in northern Burkina Faso, the villagers have
since utilized new opportunities provided by these developments
in order to negate the negative impact of drought and precipitation
variability on their traditional economic mainstay: rainfed
agriculture. By diversifying their livelihood activities out of
agriculture they strive to make money to buy food no longer
available from their fields. In this they have been very successful
and households in the village have been able to buy the food
needed to feed its members. The need to buy food has, however,
made them vulnerable to increasing food prices.
The escalation of global food prices in 2007/2008 can be
ascribed a complex array of causes and effects. Most analysts agree
however that a potent mix of rising oil prices, biofuel policies,
market speculation, US dollar depreciation, trade restrictions, lack
of investments in the agricultural sector, falling productivity due to
soil depletion, and climate change all contributed to the rapid rise
in 2007/2008 (e.g. Ghosh, 2010; Lang, 2010; Vanhaute, 2011).
Whatever the cause, the net welfare effect of the global food crisis
on the world’s very poor has been negative, largely due to the high
share of net food buyers among this group (e.g. Conceicao and
Mendoza, 2009; Cudjoe et al., 2010). In Burkina Faso between 40
and 70 per cent of household expenditures is devoted to food
(FEWS NET, 2010). In the north of the country approximately 50
per cent of the stable food (millet) is purchased (FEWS NET, 2010,
p. 71). Even though Burkina Faso is not a net food importing

0959-3780/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.03.010
660 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
country, millet prices increased by 43 per cent between November
2007 and November 2008 (Swan et al., 2010). Moreover, the
conundrum of continued high food prices in much of the
developing world despite falling global prices (Ghosh, 2010) is
also seen in Burkina Faso (FEWS NET, 2011a,b).
Tracing the interconnected trajectory of drought, diminishing
rainfed agricultural production and the need to buy food, this
article explores how the villagers in Biidi 2 attempt to negate the
negative impact of rising food prices on their lives. Besides
providing a much needed local scale evidence-based analysis of the
impact of the global food crisis on individuals and households in
the developing world (e.g. Benson et al., 2008; Janvry and Sadoulet,
2010), the article shows how adaptation to climate change can be a
matter of navigating changing socioeconomic rather than bio-
physical factors. Using recent theory from social anthropology,
adaptation to drought and continued precipitation variability in
the village is explored as a matter of social navigation (Vigh, 2003,
2006, 2009). It is suggested that this theoretical lens might help
elucidate how local people around the world adapt, what they
adapt to, and, in turn, human sociality in social–ecological systems.
The article starts with a brief reference to the theoretical
context of adaptation to climate change, global environmental
change research and social navigation. Then the local setting and
the methodology are presented. The results are organized around
three perspectives. First, the villagers’ perception of the climatic
changes over the last 50 years is presented. Second, it is shown how
these changes have made rainfed agriculture difficult, which has
prompted households to engage in livelihood diversifications.
Finally, we show how the villagers attempt to attract development
projects and negotiate with local political power holders in order to
negate the impact of the global food crisis. The results are followed
by a discussion and a conclusion.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Adaptation to climate change
The concept of adaptation has been understood, applied and
interpreted in various ways in the climate change literature (e.g.
Engle, 2011; Smit et al., 2000; Smit and Skinner, 2002; Smit and
Wandel, 2006; Smithers and Smit, 1997). At its most basic level,
adaptation research distinguishes between natural and human
systems. Natural systems respond to climate perturbations in an
entirely reactive manner, whereas the response of humans can be
reactive (after impact takes place) and/or anticipatory (before
impact takes place), ‘‘incorporating environmental perception and
risk evaluation as important elements of adaptation strategies’’
(Smithers and Smit, 1997, p. 133; Adger et al., 2007; Smit and
Skinner, 2002). As such, the adaptive response in social systems is
often defined on the basis of intent and purposefulness,
emphasizing that adaptation is a process by social actors aimed
at negating and/or ameliorating a concurrent or future situation.
These general attributes are summed up by the IPCC (2007), who
define adaptation as an ‘‘adjustment in natural or human systems
in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects,
which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities’’.
Isolating actual or expected climate stimuli as drivers of current
and/or anticipated human actions has, however, turned out to be
difficult. In a review of climate change adaptation literature
published between 2006 and 2009, Berrang-Ford et al. (2011, p. 28)
highlight that ‘‘[a]daptive activities are occurring in response to a
mixture of climate change and other motivating factors’’, and that
climate change was seen as the sole driver of adaptation actions in
just 19 per cent of the cases reviewed in developing countries and
in 26 per cent of those from developed countries (Ford et al., 2011).
This very closely follows findings from literature published before
2006 (Adger et al., 2007).
A major point of work on adaptive processes in communities
across the world is hence to associate and/or disassociate human
decision-making and actions with/from climate perturbations, and
a relatively large body of literature revolves around the issue of
singling out climate as a driver of change (e.g. Adger, 1999; Adger
et al., 2009; Belliveau et al., 2006; Eakin, 2000, 2005; Leichenko and
O’Brien, 2008; Mertz et al., 2009, 2010; O’Brien and Leichenko,
2000; Reid and Vogel, 2006; Roncoli et al., 2001; Thomas et al.,
2007; Tschakert, 2007). Evidence from the Sahel indicates that
although households are aware of climate variability and change,
they often point to economic, political and social rather than
climate factors as the major reasons for change (Mertz et al., 2009,
2010; Nielsen, 2009, 2010; Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010a, 2010b;
Tschakert, 2007). The complexity and intertwinement of drivers is
also found in Southern Africa (Reid and Vogel, 2006; Thomas et al.,
2007; Ziervogel et al., 2006; Ziervogel and Taylor, 2008), Asia
(Adger, 1999; Coulthard, 2008), and Latin America (Eakin, 2000,
2005). In order to capture actual adaptive processes at various
response spaces (Thomas et al., 2005) it therefore seems crucial to
understand adaptation as more than just adjustments to some
climate stimuli. Human beings do not only navigate a changing
biophysical reality when adapting to climate change, but also a
changing social, political and economic one and often in novel and
surprising ways.
2.2. Global environmental change research and social navigation
A range of approaches aimed at engaging seriously with human
agency, assumptions, beliefs, values, commitments, loyalties and
interest and their intertwinement with wider political, economic
and social contexts in global environmental change research have
been proposed. O’Brien (2011) suggest the emerging science of
deliberate transformation as a way to complement and supple-
ment current research on adaptation by focusing our attention on
understanding, contesting and creating change rather – and in
contrast to much adaptation literature – merely accommodating it.
Understanding change and human adaptation as potentially
creative and/or transformative are also important aspects of
ecosystem stewardship, adaptive governance and resilience
research. An important notion in this research, and particularly
in the latter, is, for example, the idea of adaptability (Walker et al.,
2004). Understanding adaptability, or the capacity of a social–
ecological system to learn, adjust, and continue to develop within a
particular context, imply that we understand how social variables
such as identity, values, networks, political and power relations
either constrain or facilitate learning, but also the wider socio-
economic context in which this plays out (Chapin et al., 2006). The
explicit focus on non-environmental factors is also a central
premise of political ecology research exploring the relationships
between social, political, economic and historical factors and
environmental issues and changes (Watts, 1983; Robbins, 2004).
Understanding human–environmental relationships requires, in
other words, that we expand our research ‘‘from investigating
human action in relation to a certain. environmental issue, like
climate change, to the challenge of multilevel collaborative societal
responses to a broader set of feedbacks and thresholds in social–
ecological systems’’ (Folke et al., 2010, p. 4).
To help capture individual and collective social responses to
broader and often non-environmental feedbacks and thresholds in
climate change research we propose drawing on theory dealing
with human subjectivity and practice. We agree with Hulme (2008,
2009) and O’Brien (2010) that research of global environmental
change and human adaptation has to a very large extent been
based upon objective studies of measurable phenomena and
 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
system approaches leaving very little room for consideration of
‘‘how subjective and intersubjective perspectives relate to and
interact with behaviours and systems’’ (O’Brien, 2010, p. 543). The
point is not to argue that social navigation, as suggested by Vigh
(2003, 2006, 2009), is the only theoretical approach that allows the
capture of non-environmental factors and human subjectivity
when exploring the human–climate nexus, but simply to illustrate
how it may help elucidate adaptability or the way in which local
actors simultaneously navigate many different uncertainties and
possibilities across time and space when adapting to climate
change. As such, we hope to show how social navigation can
contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of human actions
and their social, cultural, economic and political relations in global
environmental change research.
2.3. Social navigation
Social navigation is perhaps best understood as motion within
motion: a modality of practice that is premised on multiple
movements and temporalities. The concept thus contrasts tradi-
tional perspectives on space and practise by pointing our attention
to the relation between the movement of the environment and the
way we move within it (see and contrast with, for example, Bourdieu
(1992), Goffman (1959) and Giddens (1984) which takes the
foundational stability of our ground (fields, arenas, structures) of
enactment for given). In this manner, the concept of navigation
enables us to capture a more complex interplay between agency and
structure than kindred concepts by drawing our attention to the
complex attempts to plan and actualize practice through a constant
evaluation of ‘‘the movement of the social environment, one’s own
possibilities for moving through it, and its effects on one’s planned
and actual movement’’ (Vigh, 2006, p. 13).
The concept of navigation makes us aware that people act in
relation to both a dense and multiple spatiality and temporality.
When navigating we are aware that we might be repositioned by
shifting circumstances. As we seek to move within an unstable socio-
political environment we are at the same time being moved, entailing
that we constantly have to attune our action and trajectory to the
movement of the environment we move through. Social navigation
may thus involve detours and not least redrawing trajectories and
tactics. Rather than seeing our surrounding world as object the
concept directs our attention toward the way we experience our
surrounding world as a dense and multiple environment of actants
(cf. Latour, 2005). Yet, instead of the flat connectivity of Actor
Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005, p. 165), social navigation grants
us a view to the way people perceive the movement and
dimensionality of their social environments. By looking at the way
we move in moving environments we see that from the agent’s point
of view the environment we move in is to a large part constituted by
invisible and imagined figures and forces (Vigh, 2011). In other words,
when moving in changing and moving environments we take into
consideration the multiple, possible forces that may – in presentia or
potential – effect the movement of our social environment, and how
this in turn may challenge or affect our lives, entailing that we
constantly have an eye to the here and now as well as to the way we
imagine it to unfold in the future. The result is that people are
constantly surveying their socio-political environment in order to
anticipate oncoming possibilities and problems and their conse-
quences and ramifications; they are, in other words, ‘‘hyper-attentive
to real and imagined stimuli’’ (Vigh, 2009, p. 422).
Like the concepts of deliberate transformation, ecosystem
stewardship, adaptive governance, resilience, adaptability and
political ecology, social navigation thus has an explicit focus on
change in an entire social field rather than just in a human–
environmental nexus. The latter point is particularly important
when climate change adaptation is understood to be never really a
661
matter of adapting to climate only but rather of adapting to a
multiplicity of immediate, mediate and future perforations,
aspirations and barriers, biophysical as well as social. The concept
of navigation specifically furthers our understanding of this state of
spatial and temporal interactivity by being premised on multifac-
torial movement. People take their bearings from multiple
biophysical and socioeconomic forces, attuning plot and practice
to the many possible configurations of these. Taking our point of
departure in this interplay of the many influences and pressures on
human life in the following analysis, we show that adaptation to
climate change can be a matter of not adapting to climate
perturbations per se but to, for example, economic perforations
like the global food crisis.
3. The local setting
3.1. The global food crisis in Burkina Faso
The unprecedented increase in global food and cereal prices in
2006/7 (see Fig. 1) translated into higher food prices on many local
markets in the Sahel including Burkina Faso (see Fig. 2). That it hit
Burkina Faso is actually surprising. In terms of cereal groups,
Sahelian countries can be divided into two: those that are import-
dependent, relying on the world market for 50 per cent or more of
supply, and those that regularly produce 70 per cent or more of
their cereal needs. Burkina Faso belongs to the latter category. In
the 2007/8 growing season, for example, Burkina Faso produced
around 90 per cent of its cereal consumption (INSD, 2011). And
while the overall production of cereal was 19 percentage points
lower in 2007/8 compared to 2006/7 (Fig. 3) and the import of
cereal had increased by 24 percentage points (Fig. 4), the total extra
import amount in 2007/2008 compared to the year before was a
meagre 58,878 tonnes. Accordingly, the most common cause of
rising food prices in Burkina Faso is normally local production
shortfalls due to drought, flooding and/or pests (FEWS NET, 2008).
However, the average millet price increased by 30 per cent
between the period just prior to the crisis (January 2006–April
2008) and the period after the peak of the crisis (December 2008–
February 2011) despite the absence of a significant national
downturn in local production in this period (see Figs. 2 and 3;
FEWS NET, 2011a,b). In Burkina Faso, this paradoxical develop-
ment remain a conundrum, but is related to growing global prices
transmitted to local serials such as millet and sorghum and
production shortfalls in Nigeria. Nigeria account for 57 per cent of
total grain production in the region and thus what happens there
has a major impact on what happens with cereal markets
throughout West Africa. The demand in Nigeria for coarse grain
Real food price index (2002-2004=100)
250,0
200,0
150,0
100,0
Food Price Index
50,0
Cereals Price Index
0,0
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
Year
Fig. 1. Global Food Price Index.
Source: FAO 2011.
662
Millet price (FCFA/kg) in Ouagadougou
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Fig. 2. Ouagadougo Millet Price Index.
Source: FEWS NET.
was, for example, so strong in 2008 that Nigerians were buying up
Niger’s limited supply of coarse grains (FEWS NET, 2008). Rising
regional demands for products that use cereals as inputs (beer,
poultry, livestock production) also push prices upwards in Burkina
Faso as West African markets are closely intertwined. Furthermore,
poor transport, communications, and market infrastructure make
the move of cereal from surplus to deficit zones expensive,
something further enhanced by rising fuel prices and government
interference with markets when prices increase (FEWS NET, 2008).
The continued high food prices are worrisome in general, but
particularly so in marginal places such as the Sahel as they
drastically diminish the food security of already poor people. In the
latest Human Development Index, Burkina Faso is ranked sixth to
last (UNDP, 2010). Life expectancy is 52.7 years, only 28.3 per cent
of the population is literate and the average GDP per capita is only
USD 1124 (UNDP, 2009). Numbers for the Sahel region of the
country are often worse than the national average. Here only 18
per cent of the population is literate and the region has the lowest
rates of visits to medical services of all Burkina Faso (INSD, 2010).
Moreover, food and livelihood security is low compared to the
national average (Atampugre, 1997; INSD, 2010). The low food
security is related to very dry conditions, a variable precipitation
pattern, flooding and poor soil, all of which make rainfed cereal
production difficult. The distance from major markets, a growing
population and few salaried jobs aggravate this situation. Due to
poor production conditions households in the Sahel purchase
approximately 40–60 per cent of their stable food. Ten per cent is
received as gifts and only 20–40 per cent of their stable food intake
comes from own production (FEWS NET, 2010, p. 71).
3.2. Biidi 2
Biidi 2 (population 639) is located approximately 14 km south-
west of Gorom-Gorom, the provincial capital of Oudalan, the
5
4.5
Producion (mio tons)
4 250000
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1 50000
0.5
0 0
2002/3 2003/4 2004/5 2005/6 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9
Year
Fig. 3. Burkina Faso’s production of cereals and millet in tonnes per year.
Source: FEWS NET.
J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
Millet price (FCFA/kg) in Ouagadougou
Months
northernmost province of Burkina Faso (see Fig. 5). The village was
founded some 125 years ago and like many other villages in the
region, it is surrounded by fields cultivated with mainly millet but
also sorghum and cowpeas. The village is rimmed at its northern
side by gardens watered by small shallow wells. In Fulani, the local
language, the word biidi means constant presence of water. The
gardens are suited to the cultivation of a number of vegetables,
such as sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and aubergines. These products
are, together with livestock, the only agricultural products that are
marketed. There is, however, no strong market potential as
population density in the region is low and markets relatively few
and far away, which makes distance an obstacle. Hence, the
economic system is best described as a subsistence and
agropastoral economy in which migration, gardening, small-scale
commerce and working for development projects are becoming
increasingly important activities (Nielsen, 2009, 2010; Nielsen and
Reenberg, 2010a, 2010b).
The village is inhabited by three ethnic groups: Rimaiibe,
numbering 331 individuals, Fulbe 178, and Wahilbe 130 (Decem-
ber 2010). Of these, 280 are under the age of 15, constituting 44 per
cent of the total population. Comparisons with population figures
from 1995 indicate that the village has had an annual population
growth rate of 3.8 per cent (Reenberg and Paarup-Laursen, 1997).
Many of the people belonging to the village actually live in the
surrounding bush and the village centre itself is populated almost
exclusively by Rimaiibe and Wahilbe. Only one Fulbe household,
consisting of seven individuals, is located within the village centre.
Ethnic variation also exists in regard to land use and livelihood
strategies. Fulbe are mainly pastoralist and while they also engage
heavily in agriculture they do not to the same extent as Rimaiibe
450000
Import
400000
Export
350000
300000
Tons of cereal
200000
150000
Cereals
Millet 100000
2002/3 2003/4 2004/5 2005/6 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9
Year
Fig. 4. Burkina Faso’s import/export of cereal in tonnes per year.
Source: FEWS NET.
 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
Fig. 5. Map of Burkina Faso showing the location of the study village Biidi 2.
Source: Institut Geographique du Burkina Faso.
and Walhilbe participate in the other livelihood strategies. This is
mainly due to Fulbe cultural notions of freedom and status, but
also related to previous master–slave relations (see Nielsen and
Reenberg, 2010b). Similarly, Fulbe is not to the same extent
engaged in the negotiations with development projects and
politicians presented in this article and thus when referring to
the villagers in Sections 5.4–5.6 we are mainly referring to
Rimaiibe and Walhilbe.
4. Methods
The article builds on ethnographic fieldwork begun in Biidi 2 in
August, 2007. The initial interest in the impact of the global food
crisis grew out of the first and longest stay in the village from
August, 2007 to February, 2008. The data on the global food crisis
was however mainly collected during an extended stay in October,
November and December, 2010. It was collected via two methods:
participant observation and semi-structured interviews. It should
be noted that some of the results presented in this article regarding
rain-fed agriculture, livelihood strategies, climate perceptions and
the importance of buying food draw on research prior to the 2010
stay, in which participant observation and semi-structured inter-
views were supplemented by a questionnaire survey, focus group
interviews and human–environmental timelines (see Nielsen,
2009, 2010; Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010a, 2010b).
Participant observation was chosen for the 2010 research
because it puts the researcher where the action is and makes it
possible to collect stories, numbers, observations of daily life and
routines. To be of value, participant observation must lead to
insights, ‘‘the noticing of apparently insignificant points, the
making of connections’’ (Cohen, 1984, p. 220). Often this happens
because details, slight as they might at first appear, add up over
time, pointing the way to other elements and other details, which
might otherwise go unobserved. The severity and the importance
of rising food prices for life in the village was one such detail. In
January and February 2008, and on return visits in May/June 2008
and again in July 2009, it was noticeable, for example, that people
ate less than prior to 2008. They also talked more frequently about
where to buy food, which sellers could be trusted, who gave the
biggest portions, and which market had the best prices.
663
These basic insights were explored further in 44 semi-structured
interviews conducted during fieldwork in 2010 with people having
also been interviewed during field work in 2007/2008. The
interviewees were selected according to age, gender, socio-
economic status, ethnicity and place of residence, thus covering
all the major differentiations within the village. The interviews were
directed towards understanding the informants’ perspectives and
therefore relatively non-standardized and open-ended (see Kvale,
1996; Spradley, 1979). Nonetheless, each respondent was asked to:
(1) assess the current situation (e.g. household and village
composition, material possessions, number of animals, main income
sources, main expenditures, main concerns, climate, etc.); (2)
describe the main changes (if any) to these since 2007; and (3) assess
the main causes of these changes (if any). In order to minimize biases
in the answers no indication of the actual focus on climate and the
global food crisis was presented at this stage. In the second half of the
interviews the respondents were asked about their perception of
changes in the weather, food prices, price fluctuations and the
perceived impact (if any) of this on a range of livelihood parameters
and social aspects. When impacts were perceived as negative, the
respondents were asked to explain their adaptive actions to reduce
these impacts. Perceptions are of course subjective. They may reflect
local or broader narratives and the mind-set of individual villagers.
However, it can be assumed that individual and households act on
their perception of reality (Vedwan, 2006; Slegers, 2008) and for
complex analysis of what drives livelihood options and social actions
in rural Africa, there appears to be few other options available as
quantitative data on, for example, climate change and food prices at
a local scale is often limited (e.g. Mertz et al., 2010). Moreover,
research on traditional knowledge shows that people in general are
very aware of changes in their biophysical and socioeconomic
surroundings (Inglis, 1993; Berkes, 1999). All interviews were
conducted in Fulani with the help of interpreters and digitally
recorded.
5. Results
5.1. Perceptions of climate variability
Biidi 2 receives between 200 and 600 mm of rain a year
between May and October. There exist no meteorological data
664 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
Rainfall anomaly for Gorom-Gorom
2
1
0
-1
-2
1900 1910 1920
Fig. 6. Gorom-Gorom rainfall anomalies.
Source: Direction de la Météorologie, Burkina Faso and http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Desertification/desertification2.php.
from Biidi 2, but the monthly rainfall dataset of the nearest larger
town, Gorom-Gorom, indicates that the region has gone through
much the same precipitation development as the rest of the West
African Sahel since the 1950s, with wet 1950s and 1960s followed
by a prolonged dry spell lasting into the early 1990s (Fig. 6)
(Hulme, 2001). The general development seen elsewhere in this
region of larger inter-annual variation in the rainy season, more
rain and greater inter-annual rainfall variability in the 1990s and
early 2000s is also evident in the dataset from Gorom-Gorom
(Fig. 6) (Lebel and Ali, 2009; Nicholson, 2005).
However, the 2007, 2008, 2009 and in particular the 2010 rainy
seasons have, according to the villagers, been better than those of
1995–2006. In contrast to weather perceptions collected in the
village in 2007/8 (e.g. Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010a) rain and
temperature were perceived more positively in 2010. While
differences exist between the last four rainy seasons, the villagers
agree that the rain generally starts earlier, finishes later, and varies
less inter-annually. The dataset from Gorom-Gorom partly
supports this. Rain has fallen as early as May (except in 2010
where it started in June), October rainfall amounts have increased
since 2007, and total yearly rainfall amounts have, since 2005, been
very stable and above average for the data period (Fig. 7). Except for
2010, the total number of rain days (21, 26, 29 and 36 respectively)
is, however not greater than the average for the data period (30.4
days per season). Unfortunately, to our knowledge daily rainfall
data does not exist, but the villagers perceive the breaks in-
between rainfall events to be shorter than prior to 2007 and no
longer than a week. Data on individual rainfall events do not exist
either, but in contrast to the perceptions collected in 2007/8 these
are now said to last longer and fall less spatially isolated, leaving
the soil wet and no fields untouched. The floods experienced in
2009 and 2010 are moreover ascribed to rainfall events elsewhere
and caused by rivers overflowing their banks rather than by heavy
800
700
600
Rainfall (mm)
500
400
300
200
100
0
1955
1960
1965
1970
Fig. 7. Gorom-Gorom’s total yearly rainfall amount 1955–2010. The years 2005–2010 have been above the average of 434.15 mm per year for the entire data period.
Source: Direction de la Météorologie, Burkina Faso.
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Year
local downpours. In regard to temperatures, the villagers inter-
viewed all mentioned that it had become colder but not that the
cold and hot season had become longer.
Despite the better rain the villagers still emphasize that the
rainy season is less predictable today than 40 years ago and that it
has a larger number of false starts (making it extremely difficult to
know when to sow). The wind is also perceived to have become
stronger (compared to 2007/8), causing more pronounced
movement of sand, filling up river beds and destroying crops.
Besides the unpredictability of precipitation, the false starts and
the movement of sand, the villagers continue to mention (as they
did in 2007/8) soil degradation, the disappearance of plants, trees,
wild fauna and watering holes, and growing problems with pests
(especially worms and mice) as consequences of the changing rain
and the increased wind. In sum, all of these factors continue to
make rain-fed agriculture, the traditionally economic mainstay of
the village, difficult.
5.2. Diminishing cereal production and livelihood diversifications
In contrast to 2007, the 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons left no
farmers without any cereal production. The trend observed in 2007
of farmers giving up agriculture altogether was accordingly not
seen or mentioned in 2010 (Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010a).
Nevertheless, only four of the farmers interviewed in 2010 had
enlarged their fields or allocated more labour to agriculture since
the 2007 season and this despite the fact that there is neither a
shortages of available labour nor land in the village (Nielsen and
Reenberg, 2010a). A lack of new types of seeds particularly millet
maturing faster, chemical fertilizers and materials such as wheel-
barrows and hoes, and a growing number of development projects
in the village focusing on horticultural production (Nielsen et al.,
2012) were mentioned by the farmers as discouraging them from
Total
Average
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
Year
 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
engaging further in agriculture, but in all the interviews conducted
the variable rain remained the number one obstacle. As in 2007,
the harvests of 2008, 2009 and 2010 only provided food for
between four and nine months, and the latter only for the
households prioritizing agricultural work vis-á-vis other livelihood
strategies like migration and horticulture. In 2010, for example,
only four out of the 115 households in the village produced enough
cereals to last nine months because of exactly such a prioritization;
a choice actually leaving them short on cash for essential things
like social obligations, medicine, schooling and clothes (see
Nielsen, 2009, 2010), not to mention food for the remaining 3
month. All cereal produced on the field are consumed in the
household.
To cover their subsistence needs, households in Biidi 2 therefore
have to buy food. The money for this is mainly earned through off-
farm activities such as labour migration, gardening, small-scale
commerce such as selling goats and poultry, selling livestock and
working for development projects (Nielsen, 2009, 2010; Nielsen
and Reenberg, 2010a, 2010b; Nielsen et al., 2012). In this respect,
Biidi 2 resembles very closely other rural populations across the
Sahel (e.g. Batterbury and Warren, 2001; De Bruijn and Dijk, 1995;
Dietz et al., 2004; Mortimore, 1998; Mortimore and Adams, 2001;
Mortimore and Turner, 2005; Rain, 1999; Raynaut, 1997; Reenberg
et al., 1998; Roncoli et al., 2001). These strategies have been an
integral part of local livelihoods in Biidi 2 since the early 1970s
(Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010a), but especially migration to
Abidjan, working for development projects and selling cattle have,
since 2007, been quite profitable. The better rain since 2007 has
made the savannah greener providing more fodder, but the
flooding experienced in 2009 and 2010 were particularly severe on
the cattle. Of the 82 households owning cattle 50 experienced
losses due to drowning and some of the larger holders lost as many
as 8 cows. Considering that most household only has two or three
cows loosing one constitute a significant loss of income, for the
holders with herds of between 10 and 25 cows the losses were
similar significant. Nevertheless, the price was relatively good on
the market in Gorom-Gorom and hence selling cattle was a
lucrative enterprise. Moreover, a large goldmine had opened
nearby (Essakane), creating local work opportunities, and other
goldmines in Burkina Faso were also hiring and so were a number
of large road projects.
While there are income differences between individual house-
holds due to household size, age composition, education, health,
and entrepreneurship, all households in the village engaged in
these strategies and other livelihood strategies, were, according to
the Conseiller or local mayor, making more money on average than
prior to 2008. Even though it is hard to assess precisely the actual
income generated by off-farm livelihood strategies and selling
cattle, due to the absence of household accounting and the secrecy
of earnings, most households earned, prior to 2008, enough money
to buy food to last them the whole year. Even for the better off
households this was no longer the case in 2008 and 2009 and 2010.
5.3. Perceptions of the global food crisis
The major reason behind this development is rising food prices.
In all of the 44 interviews, the cost of food was mentioned as the
biggest concern and expense; before health, clothing and educa-
tion. Indeed, on average the interviewees estimated that their
household currently spent around 70–80 per cent of their income
on food. The prices began to rise in early 2008 but did not peak
until July–September. At this time a 100 kg bag of millet was said to
cost between 23,000 and 35,000 FCFA at the market in Gorom-
Gorom compared to around 13,000–14,000 FCFA at the same time
the year before. Inter-annual price fluctuations are normal but in
2010 the villagers emphasised that although the price had not
665
again been as high as in mid-2008, it had not dropped dramatically
either (see also Fig. 2). In 2009 the price was around 18,000–21,000
FCFA, in 2010 around 18,000–21,000. The latter was registered in
December when the price is normally low, as people still have
plenty of food from the recently completed harvest.
That the price had not gone down substantially since 2008
puzzled the villagers. The price of millet was usually closely
connected to local production booms or busts but the last four
years had produced relatively good harvests. There had been no
locust invasions as in 2005, the rain had been good and no major
floods of fields or droughts had been experienced. The explanations
the villagers provided therefore focused more on the local food
traders. These were accused of being greedy and in line with
arguments from elsewhere (e.g. Sen, 1981; Watts, 1983) this to
some extend explained rising food prices. However, the most
prominent explanation was that the traders bought at a high price
and therefore sold at a high price. The reasons for this pivoted
around climatic and political events elsewhere, both regionally and
globally. Most of the food sold in Gorom-Gorom came from other
places in Burkina Faso. The villagers all emphasized that they
thought the rain and consequently the harvest there had been bad.
The recent floods, droughts, and fires in places like Russia, Pakistan
and Australia were also linked to local prices. Although the
villagers did not necessarily know the names of these countries
they had seen on televisions set up in Gorom-Gorom how harvests
in these countries had been destroyed and how this had caused
cereal prices to go up all over the world and thus, according to the
villagers, also in Burkina Faso. Moreover, the villagers often
mentioned that food prices depended upon the cost of transport
and that because the price of oil had gone up, the cost of food had
done so too.
The villagers were subsequently rather fatalistic about their
potential to influence the price of food. They hoped for better rain,
which would reduce their need to buy food. They also ate less and
had become much more price aware, spending large amounts of
time figuring out where and when to buy food and from whom.
They had discovered which sellers provided credit and they were
selling more animals despite their losses in the floods than before
the global food crisis in order to raise money for food. These coping
strategies helped but according to the villagers interviewed, they
did not represent viable solutions as hunger, debt and a decreasing
herd were undesirable and unsustainable in the long run.
In 2008, 2009 and 2010 the villagers were hence busy trying to
find other and more sustainable solutions to the predicament the
combination of the changing climate and the global food crisis had
placed them in. On the background of previous experiences, an
emerging socioeconomic landscape of development projects (e.g.
Nielsen, 2010; Nielsen et al., 2012) and the upcoming Presidential
Election, the villagers turned their attention to these.
5.4. Attracting food projects
Among donors, Biidi 2 is generally known as a good develop-
ment village (Nielsen, 2009, 2010; Nielsen et al., 2012). Many
projects have cash-for-work activities (FEWS NET, 2011a,b) and/or
deliverer goods and materials not locally available or affordable.
This makes them attractive for the village and consequently the
villagers work well with projects. Food is one of these goods. Food
was first donated to the village by projects in the mid-1980s and
again in the late 1990s. The potentiality of projects to alleviate the
current confining and unstable situation was often emphasized in
the village. Layya, a young Rimaiibe man, for example, stated in an
interview, that ‘‘projects have helped us with food before, and can
do so again’’. This hope was shared by village representatives. Since
mid-2008 they have continually deposited written as well as oral
requests for food at the Mayor’s office and local project offices both
666 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
in Gorom-Gorom and Dori, the provincial capital. These requests,
according to the president of Comité Villageois de Dévelopment
(CVD), emphasize the hardship that the price of food causes in the
village and the subsequent need for cheap or free food: ‘‘We have
visited Gorom and Dori on numerous occasions since 2008. Each
time telling them how hungry we are, how we cannot make
enough money to buy food, and how the reason for this is high food
prices. Each time I have asked for projects to give or sell us cheap
food’’. The need for free or cheap food was also constantly
communicated to local bureaucrats, politicians and representa-
tives of projects visiting the village.
Such requests (probably combined with Biidi 2’s good reputa-
tion as a development village) paid off. In 2010 two projects
involving selling or giving away food arrived in the village. The
first, Le Programme de Réduction de la Vulnérabillité Alimentaire au
Sahel (PREVAS), arrived in February. Funded mainly by the
European Union, it started in 2010 as a response to the rising
food prices and their impact on local rural livelihoods in the Sahel
regions of Séno and Oudalan (EU, 2011). The project sold or gave
away food in the village. Free food was however only given to very
poor households. The price of a 100 kg bag of millet was 13,000
FCFA, or some 5–8000 FCFA cheaper than at the market in Gorom-
Gorom. Moreover, sacks were also sold to poor households at a
social price, as the villagers called it, for 8000 FCFA. In 2010, a total
of 250 sacks were sold in Biidi 2. According to the villagers every
household in the village bought from or were given food by
PREVAS. PREVAS targeted the whole region, but according to the
villagers not many villages were included. ‘‘Probably because’’, the
president of the CVD stated in an interview, ‘‘they have not been as
persistent and focused in their requests for help as us’’.
The second food project was by many of the interviewees not
called a project but aid. Projects are often contrasted to aid in terms
of temporal commitment. Aid is perceived to be one-off ‘events’. In
contrast to PREVAS, which is (rightly) perceived by the villagers to
run over many years, many of the villagers consequently expressed
great concern regarding whether the project would continue in
2011. The 90 100 kg millet bags sold in the village from August
through October, 2010 at the favourable price of 11,000 FCFA came,
according to the villagers, straight from the President of Burkina
Faso, who was seeking re-election on November 21, 2010. A
coincidence not lost on the villagers.
5.5. Selling votes
The Presidential Election was a big success for the sitting (since
1987) president Blaise Compaore and his party Congrés pour la
Démocratie et la Progrés, which received 53 out of a total of 65 votes
cast in the village. Hama Arba Diallo from Parti pour la Démocratie
et la Socialisme, and a very successful mayor of Dori, finished
second with 10 votes. The Biidi 2 result mirrors very closely the
national one in which Compaore won 80.2 per cent of these votes
(CENI, 2010).
The 2010 election constituted a significant political shift among
the population of Biidi 2. In the 2005 Presidential Election Parti
pour la Démocratie et la Socialisme was the big winner, receiving 65
out of a total of 111 votes, with Congrés pour la Démocratie et la
Progrés receiving only 35 (Compaore won 80.3 per cent of the
national votes in 2005). The 2010 shift was closely related to how
Compaore was perceived in the village at the time. Said to be able
to make a difference he was (among other things) credited with
making the country safe and (relatively) corruption free, enabling
hassle free movement especially to the Ivory Coast. The main
reason for Compaore’s 2010 win in Biidi 2 was, however, his
seeming ability to get food projects to the village. Compaore was
perceived as being directly involved in negotiations with foreign
political leaders, donor organisations and important institutions
like the EU. For example, even though villagers clearly understood
that PREVAS was funded by the EU and Christian Aid (which fund
about 10 per cent of the project), its presence in the village was
ascribed to Compaore going to Europe to negotiate with these
organisations to ‘‘tell them to come help us with food’’, as the
Conseiller expressed it. The selling of food from August through
October was even more directly linked to him and while the
villagers understood this project in the context of the Presidential
Election it nevertheless demonstrated to them that Compaore had
been able to deliver what they needed most, namely cheap food.
The shift in votes from 2005 till 2010 was, however, not solely a
reward for a job well done but also an investment in future food
projects. In the months leading up to the election the Conseiller, the
Jooro (the traditional head of the village) and the president of the
CVD met with the different political parties on a number of
occasions. Here the village representatives were presented the
political programmes of the parties. But the parties were also
presented the biggest needs of the village. Cheaper food was
mentioned in all the negotiations observed. The president of the
CVD was the most adamant participant, always emphasizing how
‘‘we suffer as we cannot feed our families because millet has got so
expensive’’. Better roads and mobile phone connections, dams and
other large infrastructural projects offered as solutions by some of
the political parties were welcomed but not perceived as enough
because, as the president of the CVD asked the representative of
Parti pour la Démocratie et la Socialisme, how ‘‘will that make food
prices go down now or even next year’’.
In all the meetings the Conseiller, the president of the CVD and
the Jooro emphasized that they were negotiating on behalf of the
entire village. They were therefore in a position to promise the
local representative of the Presidential candidate that the village
would vote for him if he promised certain things, in particular food
projects. All the representatives obviously liked the idea of
‘swapping’ the entire villages’ vote for promises of food projects
but all except Congrés pour la Démocratie et la Progrés were vague as
to how and when they could deliver on this promise. Referring to
the two recent food projects, its representative emphasized that
the village knew that Compaore had the power to deliver on a
promise like that. Moreover, Compaore ‘‘always travels to France
and other countries where the projects come from. I promise you
that I will tell him about your village and he will take that story
with him to people with power’’. This was exactly what the village
representatives wanted to hear and in a number of subsequent
village meetings they conveyed the message that voting for
Compaore was a good way to make sure ‘‘that the world knows
about our problems with food so they can keep sending us projects
like PREVAS’’ as the Conseiller put it.
6. Discussion
The climate change adaptation literature continues to struggle
with how to untangle the multiplicity of global and local
perforations observed in places also undergoing environmental
change. Adaptive measures directly linked to climate perturba-
tions are hard to pinpoint even in places perforated by climatic
perturbations (e.g. Berrang-Ford et al., 2011; Ford et al., 2011). A
general conclusion has often been that isolating the climate factor
from other driving forces of change is too difficult and complex an
exercise because ‘‘decisions taken are often influenced by many
non-climatic conditions, some of which appear to be more
important than the climate factors’’ (Mertz et al., 2010, p. 2;
Eakin, 2005; Mbow et al., 2008; Tschakert, 2007; Ziervogel et al.,
2006; Westerhoff and Smit, 2008).
Using social navigation as a theoretical lens might not be
possible everywhere, but drawing a theoretical approach such as
this into the climate change adaptation literature might help
 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
clarify adaptive processes. Showing how and to what people adapt
in a constantly moving environment, social navigation encom-
passes peoples’ assessment of the present socioeconomic and
biophysical situation, its pitfalls and possibilities, as well as
potential routes out of it. As such, social navigation catch agency
and elucidate learning, adaptability and potential transformative
social processes in the making adding theoretical and empirical
insights to current discussions in global environmental research of
those very processes. When navigating, people seek to act in the
immediate as well as move towards positions in the yet to come,
they seek to transform their situation not just accommodate
change. Social navigation can thus best be understood as an on-
going process of emplotment, which is constantly attuned to
multiple movements and outcomes (Vigh, 2009, p. 426).
The focus on multiple movements, transformative actions and
skilful employments also has the potential to reorient the research
focus from the rather mechanistic coupling of climate change and
livelihood diversifications present in much adaptation literature
(cf. Hulme, 2008). Most research from sub-Saharan Africa
exploring adaptation to climate changes work, for example, within
a livelihood diversification paradigm. Diversification strategies
within farm activities (e.g. Lacy et al., 2006; Mortimore, 1998;
Mortimore and Adams, 2001; Ponte, 2001; Thomas et al., 2007;
Yaro, 2006) and from farm activities to non-farm activities is
widespread and well documented (e.g. Barrett et al., 2001;
Bryceson and Jama, 1997; Cordell et al., 1996; Nielsen and
Reenberg, 2010a; Rain, 1999; Raynaut, 1997; Reenberg et al., 1998;
Roncoli et al., 2001). Having exhausted available within farm
strategies like selling cattle and non-farm strategies like labour
migration, the villagers of Biidi 2 were constantly plotting, that is,
surveying their socio-political environment in order to find
possibilities to negate the price of food. The villagers managed
to get food in the here and now by attracting food projects and
maybe for the future by manipulating politicians; their hyper-
attentiveness to emergent social possibilities rather than their
ability to diversify their livelihoods thus paid off. The way they
obtained 340 100 kg bags of millet sold far below the market price
in 2010 and political promises of more to come is thus a result of
social navigation rather than livelihood diversification.
Yet importantly, their need to be hyper-attentive to real and
imagined social possibilities is closely related to a wider
multifarious spectre of forces and figurations in which environ-
mental change figures prominently. By linking the villagers’ tactile
and tactic social practices by which they negate the negative
impact of the global food crisis with the intertwined trajectory of
rainfall variability, diminishing agricultural production and the
subsequent need to buy food experienced in the village, we have
shown that climate matters (Thomas et al., 2007) in Biidi 2. The
need for cheap food is intimately connected to the lack of rain and
navigating the global food crisis is hence also a matter of adapting
to the impact of climate change experienced in Biidi 2.
Besides elucidating how and what people in Biidi 2 adapt to by
unravelling the complex relationship of environmental and
socioeconomic drivers of change found there, our findings thus
show that adaptation is not necessarily a matter of adapting to
either climatic or non-climatic perturbations, but rather that
adapting to the latter can also be a matter of adapting to former,
and probably vice versa in other settings. We do not claim that
reanalysing the empirical cases presented in the literature
examined by Berrang-Ford et al. (2011) and Adger et al. (2007)
by way of social navigation will reveal the same as in Biidi 2, but
simply that maybe contrasting adaptation to non-climatic and
climatic drivers miss important connections between the two.
Moving beyond a discourse emphasizing the need for a direct
observable cause–effect relationship between climate perturba-
tions and human actions might help us expand the category of
667
climate change adaptation to include non-climatic drivers and in
turn help answer the difficult question of whether we are adapting
to climate change (e.g. Arnell, 2010; Berrang-Ford et al., 2011). It
seems, at least in Biidi 2, that the answer is yes, but that the causal
relationship is one step removed. Adding social navigation to our
theoretical arsenal (Das, 1995) might thus also help us capture
what does not at first sight appear as adaptation to climate change
but might actually be just that.
7. Conclusion
Research agendas that aim to improve understandings of how
and what people adapt to in settings perforated by a mix of
socioeconomic and environmental exposures require appropriate
theoretical frameworks. Adaptation understood as adjustment in
human systems in response to actual and/or expected climate
stimuli as well as resilience, adaptive management, and transfor-
mation theories provides such frameworks. These could, however,
be supplemented by an analytical framework that encompasses
the dimensional density and multifactoriality of lived social life.
This is so because the climate change adaptation literature has
convincingly shown that people do not only adapt to climate
perturbations but also, and simultaneously, to a multiplicity of
other non-climatic drivers of change such as socioeconomic
possibilities and predicaments.
Unravelling the intertwinement of biophysical and socioeco-
nomic drivers of change in local adaptive practice was done in this
article by using the concept of social navigation. Following the
theoretical tenets offered by this concept we explored how the
villagers in Biidi 2 in drought-prone northern Burkina Faso
navigated multiple parameters of change by constantly looking
at their social situation rather than the climatic situation,
pondering the possibilities arising from even detrimental biophys-
ical as well as social change. By showing villagers’ hyper-
attentiveness to emergent social possibilities and their ability to
attract development projects offering cheap food and to negotiate
with political parties in order to negate the negative impact of the
global food crisis, we have demonstrated how they move in a
multifarious moving environment, where change is intercon-
nected across a spectre of forces and figurations.
In addition to unravelling how various drivers of change
intermingle and are adapted to, by connecting adaptation to both
non-climatic and climatic drivers we have shown how adaptation
to climate change can be a matter of not adapting to climate
perturbations per se but to, for example, socioeconomic perfora-
tions and opportunities. This latter point is crucial as the climate
change adaptation literature continues to struggle with how to
untangle the multiplicity of global as well as local perforations
observable in places also undergoing environmental change. That
this research agenda has coincided with calls for large-scale
international assistance to finance adaptation to climate change
(e.g. Patt et al., 2010; Parry et al., 2009) only makes understanding
how and what local people adapt to all the more urgent.
Acknowledgements
The field research, analysis and writing of the paper was funded
by a European Research Council grant (grant 229459 Water-
worlds). We would like to extend our thanks to the villagers of Biidi
2. The fieldwork was carried out with permission of, and in
accordance with, the Ministere des Enseignements Secondaire
Superieur et de la Research Scientifique research permission N
2007 0089, Burkina Faso. Sarah D’haen contributed to the
construction of all the figures. We would like to thank the
anonymous reviewers of this article. Any remaining errors of fact,
argument, or interpretation are our fault, and not theirs.
668 J.Ø. Nielsen, H. Vigh / Global Environmental Change 22 (2012) 659–669
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