For millions of people living in East Africa, the climate has a direct bearing on their existence. During the course of centuries, the region has been subject to temperature and rainfall variances that have habitually put Tanzanians, along with other East Africans, at the margins. Through adaptability and understanding of their environment they have survived, and occasionally prospered. The changes in climate and the rise of temperatures for the last two generations, however, have markedly altered life in the region, including northern Tanzania.

The impact of an inconsistent weather pattern on the whole environment is dramatic. It is affecting everything from the now-unpredictable rains and the length of the growing season to the escalation in the number of insects and the increase of disease in animals.

Farmers and Maasai pastoralists alike join with Tanzanian scientists and government officials in describing the transformations they are making to adapt to a new reality, a reality that doesn’t end in East Africa. The stories of older people who have witnessed the effects of life-altering temperature increases, as well as younger people rethinking their sense of future, come to life in “Living on the Edge of Climate Change.”