Adaptation to New Climate by an Old Strategy? Modeling Sedentary and Mobile Pastoralism in Semi-Arid Morocco

Korbinian Freier,Uwe Schneider,Manfred Finckh

doi:10.3390/land3030917

Abstract

In a modeling study we examine vulnerability of income from mobile (transhumant) pastoralism and sedentary pastoralism to reduced mean annual precipitation (MAP) and droughts. The study is based on empirical data of a 3410 km2 research region in southern, semi-arid Morocco. The land use decision model integrates a meta-model of the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) simulator to depict perennial and annual forage plant development. It also includes livestock dynamics and forward-looking decision making under uncertain weather. Mobile livestock in the model moves seasonally, sedentary livestock is restricted to pastures around settlements. For a reduction of MAP by 20%, our model shows for different experimental frequencies of droughts a significant decrease of total income from pastoralism by 8%–19% (p < 0.05). Looking separately at the two modes of pastoralism, pronounced income losses of 18%–44% (p < 0.05) show that sedentary pastoralism is much more vulnerable to dryer climate than mobile pastoralism, which is merely affected. Dedicating more pasture area and high quality fodder to mobile pastoralism significantly abates impacts from reduced MAP and droughts on total income by 11% (p < 0.05). Our results indicate that promotion of mobile pastoralism in semi-arid areas is a valuable option to increase resilience against climate change.

Highlights

Livestock husbandry worldwide contributes to livelihoods of more than 600 million people, most of them living in semi-arid areas of developing countries in Asia and Africa [1]
We develop an integrated regional land-use decision model based on a broad range of empirical data to investigate impacts of a dryer climate on pastoralism in the upper Drâa Catchement in Southern Morocco
We focus on differences in income generation between two alternative modes of pastoral production: mobile pastoralism and sedentary pastoralism

Summary

Introduction

Livestock husbandry worldwide contributes to livelihoods of more than 600 million people, most of them living in semi-arid areas of developing countries in Asia and Africa [1]. Projections for these countries indicate increasing population pressure and reductions in rainfall due to climatic change [2,3]. The extent of future income losses from livestock husbandry is very difficult to assess for real world systems. The extent of income losses will, depend on the future combination of these alternative production strategies and their specific vulnerability to a dryer climate

Methods

Results

Conclusion