S. Desta

Capacity Building Helps Pastoral Women Transform Impoverished Communities in Ethiopia

Diversification of income-producing activities provides greater resilience to drought. Poverty, drought, and hunger devastate people on Africa’s rangelands. We used an action-oriented approach from 2000 to 2004 to build capacity among thousands of pastoralists to diversify livelihoods, improve living standards, and enhance livestock marketing. The process included collective action, microfinance, and participatory education. Poor women previously burdened by domestic chores became leaders and rapidly changed their communities. Drought occurred from 2005 to 2008. We assessed intervention effects on household drought resilience with a quasiexperimental format that incorporated survey-based comparisons of treatment groups with ex post controls. Interventions led to major improvements in trends for quality of life, wealth accumulation, hunger reduction, and risk management. Human capacity building can be a driver for change, generating hope and aspirations that set the stage for the use of new information and technology.

Collective Action, Innovation, and Wealth Generation Among Settled Pastoral Women in Northern Kenya

Abstract Collective action occurs when people join together to tackle problems of common interest. Collective action can be an effective means of group problem solving, especially among poorer residents of densely populated urban areas or farming systems. Few examples have been documented, however, for the lightly populated rangelands, where pastoralists are better known for their social independence and opportunistic behavior. We were therefore surprised to encounter dynamic womens collective-action groups in small settlements throughout north-central Kenya, a pastoral region characterized by high rates of poverty, few public services, recurrent drought, and ethnic conflict. We wanted to understand why groups were created and how they functioned. We used a semistructured questionnaire to interview representatives from 16 groups in February 2006. Results indicated that most groups had formed since the 1990s. They emerged either spontaneously or after encouragement from local development-agency staff. Founding members were exclusively women who were often illiterate and poor. Groups have elected leaders and are governed under constitutional frameworks with extensive bylaws. Groups form to improve living standards for members, and numerous success stories were noted. Groups undertake activities including microfinance, livelihood diversification, and mitigation of drought effects; they also spearhead and fund community education and health initiatives. A tally of 63 groups created over the previous 25 yr indicated that 2 had collapsed, 47 were thriving, and 14 were failing. Group failure was most attributed to poor leadership and negative interpersonal dynamics among members, but important external threats included drought, poverty, political incitement, illiteracy, and agitation by men. In a region beset by large challenges it is notable that such grassroots innovation can help fortify social, human, and financial capital and this, in turn, can improve risk management and human well-being. Collective action should be recognized as a vital development process in Kenyas rangelands that deserves more policy-level attention.

Opportunities and challenges of indigenous biotic weather forecasting among the Borena herders of southern Ethiopia

The practical utilization of available modern as well as traditional weather forecasting systems builds herders’ resiliency capacity to climatic shocks. The precision and reliability of the forecasting system determines its creditability and acceptance by the users to be proactive in the decisions they make based on the forecasted information. It has been postulated that traditional weather forecasting systems are becoming less reliable due to repeated faulty forecasts. The study assesses the current status of the Borana traditional weather forecasting system and how traditional experts make weather forecasts based on biotic indicators such as intestinal readings, changes in plant and animal body languages. Questionnaire survey, field observations, focus group discussions and interviews with relevant key informants were employed to obtain data. Collected field data was compared with National Metrological Service Agency instrumental data for consistency. Results reveal that herders made short term weather forecasts using intestinal readings, and observed changes in plant and animal body languages. The study shows the extent how public confidence in the accuracy of indigenous weather forecasting skills has been gradually eroded overtime due to faulty forecasts. The precision and credibility of the traditional weather forecast steadily declined and led to repeated faulty predictions. Poor documentation, oral based knowledge transfer system, influence of religion and modern education, aging and extinction of traditional experts were identified as the major causes undermining the vitality of traditional climate forecast. Traditional weather foresting knowledge and skill could have some utility and also serve as a starting point to scientifically study the relationship between various signs and implied climatic events. This article recommends before traditional Borana weather forecasting system completely disappears, a remedial action should be carried out to rescue this long established wisdom, knowledge and skill and maximize the benefits from what works well. The forecast needs of herders could be rendered by a combination of modern and traditional weather forecasting services. Further research is required to explore possible area of complementarity between the modern and traditional forecasting systems for improved efficiency and effectiveness in predictability, dissemination and advice.

Climate variability, perceptions of pastoralists and their adaptation strategies: Implications for livestock system and diseases in Borana zone

Purpose Climate variability and extremes adversely affect the livestock sector directly and indirectly by aggravating the prevalence of livestock diseases, distorting production system and the sector profitability. This paper aims to examine climate variability and its impact on livestock system and livestock disease among pastoralists in Borana, Southern Ethiopia. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods using household questionnaire, field observations, focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Areal grid dikadal rainfall and temperatures data from 1985 to 2014 were collected from national meteorological agency. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed and interpreted using appropriate analytical tools and procedures. Findings The result revealed that the study area is hard hit by moisture stress, due to the late onset of rainy seasons, decrease in the number of rainy days and volume of rainfall. The rainfall distribution behavior coupled with the parallel increase in minimum and maximum temperature exacerbated the impact on livestock system and livestock health. Majority of the pastoralists are found to have rightly perceived the very occurrence and manifestations of climate variability and its consequences. Pastoralists are hardly coping with the challenges of climate variability, mainly due to cultural prejudice, poor service delivery and the socio-economic and demographic challenges. Research limitations/implications Pastoralists are vulnerable to the adverse impact of climate variability and extreme events. Practical implications The finding of the study provides baseline information for practitioners, researchers and policymakers. Originality/value This paper provided detailed insights about the rainfall and temperature trend and variability for the past three decades. The finding pointed that pastoralists’ livelihood is under climate variability stress, and it has implications to food insecurity.

Pastoralists and Farmers Coping and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Their Perceived Success in Ethiopia

This paper explores adaptations and the perceived responses of success to the effects of climate variability on agricultural production in selected highland and lowland areas of Ethiopia based on primary and secondary data obtained from different sets of stakeholders using a mixed research approach. This study reveals that pastoralists and farmers are employing agricultural and non-agricultural responses at various levels to climate variability. However, generally, highland farmers’ have more coping and adaptation options both in agricultural and non-agricultural livelihood practices. Moreover, the majority of maladaptation options are practiced by farmers. Similarly, female-headed households showed more adaptive response options than their male counterparts who suffered from cultural prejudice. Some existing adaptation practices are hardly useful in times of severe drought where pastoralists and farmers suffer partial or total crop failure and mass death of livestock. In this case, they could not sustain their life without relief aid. Pastoralists and farmers perceived adaptation success to climate variability is determined by differences in age, income, gender and education. Thus, only the rich, educated and the young had positively perceived the success of their responses to climate variability. In other words, there are variations in objective adaptive capacity and not all pastoralists and farmers possess the subjective factor (motivation) for adaptation to climate variability. The study concludes that future adaptation strategies should capitalize on preparing pastoralists and farmers for extreme scenarios.