Chapter 11 A LITERATURE SURVEY ABOUT RISK AND VULNERABILITY IN DRYLANDS, WITH A FOCUS ON THE SAHEL Kees van der Geest and Ton Dietz Abstract: While focusing on recent scientific literature about the Sahel, we present an overview of conceptual advances in understanding risk and vulnerability in dryland societies. The unreliability of rainfall and the seasonality of rainfall, agricultural activities and economic and social life as a whole have created the necessity to cope with vulnerability and stress. A central concept to understanding vulnerability is entitlement, but this is combined with insights from the empowerment approach, the political ecology approach, human ecology and political economy, creating a ‘causal structure of vulnerability’. However, people’s responses can be very different, based on different sensitivity and resilience. Incorporating concepts like insurance strategies, coping strategies and adaptation, a conceptual framework of farm household vulnerability is presented which can be used as a tool to study dryland societies like the ones in West Africa. Those who wish to predict climate change can learn from recent experiences in the region during adverse years, which experiences were the basis for most of the studies reviewed in this chapter. 1. INTRODUCTION This book deals with the impact of unreliable rainfall, drought, seasonality of rainfall and climate change on rural people’s food and livelihood security. It therefore touches on the current scientific debates on global climate change and its local and regional impact, the influence of climatic variability on rural people’s livelihoods, the development of Early Warning Systems (EWS) against famine, agricultural intensification, livelihood diversification; migration and remittances; and the functioning of a ‘moral economy’. 117 A.J. Dietz et al. (eds.), TheImpact of Climate Change on Drylands: With a Focus on West-Africa, 117–146. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.