 I'm Elizabeth Stites from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, and we're hugely appreciative to ILRI and CRDD and everyone else for coming together today for this discussion and debate. And I will talk very briefly about one of our projects from Tufts University on reexamining early warning systems and humanitarian responses in these dry land spaces. And I'm very honored to be representing our team today, which is we have a number of people here. Rachma Hassan is one of our two postdocs who you met earlier. Matteo Caravani, put your hand up. This is Matteo, our other postdoc. That's Matteo. We have Roba Gilo, our PhD student from Tufts University from Ethiopia. And we have Helen Young, who is here as well. And last, but definitely not least, and known to many of you in the room, we have Achiba Gargule, who is not working on this particular project quite yet, but I have plans to rope him in. But he has been working with Helen and myself. We are also the learning partners for CRS Noiri in Isiola and Marcibit counties. So we have been working together for the last few years on that project, which has a lot of overlap in some of our thinking and learning about these spaces. So I'm very grateful that everyone is here. What is the objective of this study? This might speak about how well aligned these different moments are, because this study takes as its premise the fact that this disconnect exists, right? To say these international and national systems of early warning and response have not done what they need to do. There is a consistent disconnect or gap between what they aim to do, what they strive to do, and what actually happens on the ground in perceptions, in experiences, in knowledge, etc. So we're seeking to unpack that in this study as we are attempting to do in this room today. This project is in two phases. Phase one entailed three desk studies, secondary data analysis, looking at different levels. What are these questions from the pastoral level? What does the literature tell us about how pastoralists themselves view these topics? The second desk study was looking at how do the national and state actors view these issues, and the third desk study looks at how the international community views these. Pulling from these three, we're currently working on a synthesis report, which is the so what piece, which is the piece that examines the themes across this disconnect and tries to really put names and concepts on what this disconnect looked like. Phase one also included a landscape review phase. Many of you in this room were involved. We greatly appreciate that. In which we talked to more than 50 experts, academics, and practitioners in these fields to understand their views, what they think about these disconnects, and how these things are or are not working. Phase two, which we have started now, which is the really exciting phase, involves three case studies, two of which I will talk about today, one of which is in Marsabit and the Barana zone of southern Ethiopia, that's led by Rahmah Hassan. The second one is in Karamoja, Uganda and Turkana, Kenya, led by Mateo Karavani. All of these projects work closely with local NGOs, which I'll talk about more in a minute, several of whom are represented here. The third case study we're still waiting for USAID approval, I should have said early on that USAID BHA was funding this project, we're very grateful to their support, and that will be in the hopefully in the Niger Mali Burkina Faso trying. Okay, so thinking specifically for this brief presentation, what do we see as some of these challenges, what are the desk studies, what is the literature and people's interviews tell us about what some of these challenges are, why do they exist? So that's what I'll talk about here. We first looked at some of the disconnect between this external policy and practice and pastoral perspective. So we all say this exists, let's unpack it a little bit to see what some of these thematic areas of disconnect are. So I'm touching on just a few of the many that came out of our desk studies here that I thought were most relevant for this convening. First, we have a general bias towards sedentary approaches in our programming, in our targeting, in our early warning, and our response, versus systems that are essentially mobile. Secondly, we think about we try to control variability, to predict variability, as opposed to embracing the variability that is the very nature of life and livelihoods within dry land systems. Third, in many of the programming and targeting, external actors take a household level approach, right? Again, this comes from many of the sedentary biases about how we think about development and humanitarian work, but in fact, pastoralists live within a systems, a community-based approach. So a household level approach is often ineffective to meet the needs. Next, often we have rigid and centralized institutions that are unable to recognize, respond to, or incorporate the nature of flexible and dynamic systems that define pastoral existence. As someone mentioned earlier, we have a heavy reliance on scientific and technological approaches and thinking about early warning and response, as opposed to focusing on what are these local indigenous knowledge-based systems and practices. What are they? How do they work? How can we tap into them? Top-down approaches versus building on local networks of reliability. What are the existing networks of trust? And many interventions when we start cataloging interventions in these areas are either human-focused or livestock-focused. Rarely do they focus on those two entities together, which of course forms the basis of how pastoralists live their lives. We also looked at some of the structural challenges to effective external response. Again, there are many more. These are the ones that I chose to focus on here. One of these is that often state development or maldevelopment in these areas underpins the humanitarian crisis. This makes it very difficult for national actors and their international partners to respond effectively and appropriately in places where they, through years or centuries of practice, have contributed to the problems that are undermining resilience. Effective early warning systems, as we all know, require substantial national funding and commitments of political will. These are often absence. Uneven capacities limit early warning and humanitarian responses at the national and subnational level. Centralized planning can hinder the need for highly context-specific response, right? As Guyo said, all of Marsabit is red. Anyone who's been to Marsabit knows that there's huge variability, even between 10 kilometers and the next. And fragmentation at all levels leads to a lack of cohesive program. I'm going to touch briefly on the two case studies that are approved, and both of which overlap with Kenya. The first led by RACMA is in Marsabit and the Burana Zone. Here we're working with CRDD and also with SIFA in southern Ethiopia, represented by Guyo. The aim of this is to think about how to better shift the policy agenda so that it can be more attuned to pastoral needs. And to do this through focusing centering at the center of the dialogue, pastoral knowledge and practices, on early warning, on mitigation and on response, and helping bring that perspective into the lens and landscape of external stakeholders. We're intentionally taking a cross-border focus in all of our case studies, which is often not done by responders because of national bias, because of national focus, because of donor funding, et cetera. But of course, we recognize that the cross-border systems are critical in these networks of trust, support, exchange, reliability, et cetera. We're using a qualitative participatory method and an iterative design, which allows us to build upon local knowledge as it becomes apparent as important actions. The second case study I'm going to touch on today, led by Matteo Caravani, is in the Turkana, is between Turkana and Karamoja. The research question underpinning this study is what knowledge and resources do pastoralists themselves rely on to respond to shocks and uncertainty? Here I'm going to talk specifically about some of the methodological approaches that we're using in this case study. First, we're seeking to overcome the settled bias of many researchers and programmers that focus on communities and villages by following the herds. Second, we're going to be using daily voice recordings from multiple participants to try to have a more diverse representation of voices and knowledge. Third, we're taking seasonality seriously by following herds for a 12-month period throughout the year, mapping where they go, what they do, what are the networks, who are the higher reliability professionals, what are the systems. And lastly, not lastly, we're using pastoralists embedded as researchers to get a diverse ethnographic methods and new perspectives. And we're looking at the wider endogenous sharing systems across states and non-states. Here comes Peter, luckily I'm on my last slide. What do we want to think as we think about advancing the policy debate today? We have a number of questions that we pulled together and one of the ways we're thinking about this is what it would be like if these different perspectives, approaches, technologies, and sources of knowledge and practice were under one tree and talking together. Some of the questions that arise that hinder this greater collaboration and co-creation is how can policy actors support and augment local knowledge and strategies? How can these same actors stimulate systems instead of seeking to replace them through external interventions? And importantly, how can we see beyond a disaster narrative, as many people have said today, to recognize that these communities are not in a state of perpetual crisis, but within them those deep sources of resilience, of capacity, of planning, of knowledge, et cetera, to recognize resilience and opportunities. And lastly, how can we expand accountability and collectivity for these regions, for the vulnerability that does strike them to better respond to shocks and crises as they emerge? I leave you with these questions and I greatly look forward to our meeting today. Thank you for having me.