Tribal Warfare and Climate Change in the Jade Sea: Ecopoetics for Future

Lake Turkana, located between Kenya and Ethiopia, is not only the birthplace of humanity but also the habitat of African tribes with ancient origins, who have always maintained a secular isolation from the outside world. However, Lake Turkana, representing the world's largest permanent lake in a desert area, is gradually shrinking, initiating a battle for survival between the Turkana tribe, residing in Todoyang, the last Kenyan village before the Ethiopian border, and the Ethiopian Dassanech tribe. According to the University of Oxford, the region experienced a temperature increase of about 3 degrees between 1967 and 2021. Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted that by 2030, this region will face the world's highest mortality linked to the climate crisis. The Omo River, responsible for 93% of the water supply to Lake Turkana, has been the subject of various projects aimed at improving water resource distribution, but this has contributed to exacerbating tensions among the different regions involved. Water is thus a central element in numerous international cooperation programs, but it is also a source of lethal conflicts and one of the main factors fueling interregional migration movements. The intense tribal rivalries, now fought with modern weapons, represent today's first and true conflict driven by climate change. Water represents an element of life but also of death, a deeply rooted understanding in African culture. In it, we find a new perspective that leads us to the discovery of communities that live daily with a respectful relationship with nature, characterized by a non-colonial sensitivity and complete unawareness of climate change. A sincere commitment, therefore, to future generations and our planet urgently requires the orientation of social and economic policies of these countries towards an ecological and social transition in order to ensure widespread and widespread access to the water resource. For the Turkana and Dassanech herders, the border is a fluid and fragile concept, constantly evolving and in agreement with the climatic and territorial variables that influence its change. Therefore, the inhabitants of Lake Turkana are called "resilient", capable, therefore, of adapting to change, always and in any case.