The Cultura21 eBooks Series on Culture and Sustainability presents findings from inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives in research and practice. The eBooks are published openly online by Cultura21 Institut e.V. in order to support broad dissemination and to stimulate further debates in civil society and further action-research in the field.
Karamoja, a semi-arid region located north-east of Uganda, is the land of Karimojong pastoralists. It is also a region in crisis: it is affected by arms trafficking, a demographic boom, climate change as well as other complicated development issues. More than that, Karamoja is a place where questions of “development” and “sustainability” intermingle in all their dimensions: environmental, historical, cultural, economic and political. This publication aims at presenting the complexity of all those challenges through the exploration of an innovative methodology to analyze environmental disasters: the Syndrome Approach.
David Knaute (1981) has coordinated in 2008-2009 an advocacy campaign on the crisis in Karamoja (www.karamoja.eu). He currently lives in Paris where besides his professional activities, he prepares a PhD thesis at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).