Social differentiation in climate change adaptation: One community, multiple pathways in transitioning Kenyan pastoralism.

• Adaptation pathways are contingent processes highly influenced by wealth, age and gender. • Social and technical aspects of climate change adaptation pathways are fundamentally intertwined. • Focusing on adaptation practices and processes as units of analysis enables identification of the mechanisms of social differentiation. • Adaptation policies and interventions should anticipate socially differentiated pathways to avoid exacerbating existing inequalities. Climate change adaptation literature on pastoralists often embraces a systems approach that uses aggregate analysis, giving a false assumption of community homogeneity. It assumes that a pastoral community is a coherent unit, an assumption that does not adequately capture the increasingly differentiated adaptation pathways. Analyzing key adaptation practices among Maasai (agro-) pastoralists' of Laikipia County, we outline how wealth, age and gender differentiate actors' adaptation pathways. We argue that adaptation pathways are political processes highly negotiated by these elements of social differentiation and that individual actors adaptation opportunities are substantially shaped by their social positions. Additionally, we make the case for using adaptation practices as focal points for adaptation pathways research because this methodological choice allows unpacking who, why and how questions in the uptake of emerging technical adaptation practices, especially how they are influenced by individual social positions of wealth, age and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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