Adaptive capacity in Tanzanian Maasailand: Changing strategies to cope with drought in fragmented landscapes

•We examine coping mechanisms used by Tanzanian Maasai in response to the 2009 drought.•Increased fragmentation of rangelands is leading to new coping strategies.•Mobility remains an important coping mechanism but is being practiced in new ways.•Adaptive capacity is linked to new entitlement bundles.•Household level adaptive capacity may not lead to adaptive capacity of the social–ecological system. This study examines the ways in which the adaptive capacity of households to climatic events varies within communities and is mediated by institutional and landscape changes. We present qualitative and quantitative data from two Maasai communities differentially exposed to the devastating drought of 2009 in Northern Tanzania. We show how rangeland fragmentation combined with the decoupling of institutions and landscapes are affecting pastoralists’ ability to cope with drought. Our data highlight that mobility remains a key coping mechanism for pastoralists to avoid cattle loss during a drought. However, mobility is now happening in new ways that require not only large amounts of money but new forms of knowledge and connections outside of customary reciprocity networks. Those least affected by the drought, in terms of cattle lost, were those with large herds who were able to sell some of their cattle and to pay for private access to pastures outside of Maasai areas. Drawing on an entitlements framework, we argue that the new coping mechanisms are not available to all, could be making some households more vulnerable to climate change, and reduce the adaptive capacity of the overall system as reciprocity networks and customary institutions are weakened. As such, we posit that adaptive capacity to climate change is uneven within and across communities, is scale-dependent, and is intimately tied to institutional and landscape changes.