Drylands cover approximately 40 percent of the earth's land area and support more than a billion people, most of whom live in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where agro-pastoralism is the major food system. Climate-related shocks such as drought, water-scarcity, diseases and pests, and food price spikes have profoundly impacted household food security among dryland agro-pastoralists, especially in Tanzania. Thus, there is a need to investigate mechanisms to ensure the future resilience of livelihoods and food systems in these regions. The goal of this dissertation is to use resilience thinking approaches to identify points of intervention in dryland SES, to manage both present and future climate risks. Resilience assessment is guided by three major questions: "resilience of what, to what, and for whom".Paper-I explores "resilience of what, to what, for whom" through the use of systems archetypes for a Maasai dryland agro-pastoralist food system in Northern Tanzania. The paper identified three system archetypes- Escalation, Limits to Growth, and Shifting the Burden-to (1) pinpoint the elements, patterns, and relationships that make up agro-pastoralist food systems; and (2) find leverage points to address the archetypical patterns limiting food security. The paper suggests a need for institutional strengthening and polycentricity to deal with food insecurity among agro-pastoralists. Paper-II explores what shocks Tanzanian food systems are responding to and how, i.e., "resilience of what, to what". The paper used randomly sampled household data collected at national level through secondary sources to understand how different adaptive capacities influence their ability to deal with climate shocks, particularly with respect to ensuring food security, measured in terms of dietary diversity and household consumption expenditure. Through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the paper drew a path model that indicated investment in wealth and income diversification and investment in infrastructure were able to mediate the impact of shocks on food security. Paper-III similarly explores "resilience of what, to what" but using System Dynamics Modeling (SDM). The model allowed the exploration of feedback mechanisms and interactions between the population, livestock, and crop sub-sectors with food security in agro-pastoralist food systems in Naitolia village in Tanzania. The goal of the model was also to evaluate effectiveness of multiple policy scenarios required for food security. Out of four simulated scenarios, the model identified enhancing mechanisms for food production, along with reducing post-harvest losses and livestock predation, as most likely to result in a food sufficient scenario in the future. In creating these analyses and findings, the dissertation recommends four major leverage points to support food security through both present and future climate shocks: (1) maintaining diversity and redundancy in income and assets that provide insurance against failures; (2) fostering connectivity between multiple actors across networks for promoting bridging social capital; (3) ensuring polycentric governance so that the right well-connected institutions at the right time can deal with both agro-pastoralist rights to food and respond to disturbance and uncertainty. The dissertation also creates methodological advancement in the understanding of food security in complex systems under climate shocks, by utilizing a variety of approaches that support system thinking - systems archetypes, statistical modeling, and simulation through a system dynamics model.
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