Paper short abstract:

Adaptation strategies to environmental (including climate) change in densely populated refugee camp areas are often omitted in climate adaptation policies. The paper aims to present adaptation strategies of management authorities, inhabitants and host communities of two refugee camps in Tanzania.

Paper long abstract:

Most climate change adaptation studies in Africa focus on fragile populations living in drought-prone areas. This paper goes beyond that pattern, and approaches climate change more broadly within the framework of environmental change, focusing on those changes in and around refugee camps. This type of settlement is interesting because when established, they result in an extremely densely populated area in a short time, and thus have a significant environmental impact on a local and regional level.

As an example, the paper takes the recently closed Mtendeli refugee camp and the still operating Nduta refugee camp in the heavily climate-affected Kigoma region of northwestern Tanzania. It aims to present a spectrum of local coping and adaptation strategies of camp management authorities, refugees and the host community in the face of uncertainty associated with both future, and environmental changes. The research is based on social qualitative and remote sensing data conducted within the ARICA A multi-directional analysis of refugee/IDP camp areas based on HR/VHR satellite data project.

The results show that the environment is changing not so much due to climate change but mostly due to specific management of the camps. Not without significance is the experience of uncertainty about the future, that influences how refugees treat the environment. Since the research presents adaptation strategies in such a complex reality, its findings may have broader applicability to other places where different forms of coping and adaptation strategies to environmental changes simultaneously generate those changes.