Evaluating the impacts of climate-induced east Africa's recent disastrous drought on the pastoral livelihoods

Abstract

Recurrent droughts, exacerbated by the climate, are becoming the greatest threat to the people of eastern Africa. In this region, including eastern Ethiopia, pastoralism is the prime source of livelihood. Due to susceptible means of living this area is mostly affected by droughts and related climatic shocks. Coordinated actions, therefore, demanded to reduce extreme vulnerability and increase adaptive capacity. To bring about change, the development of proactive drought risk management strategies and the adoption of appropriate measures are cliamed. However, there are few studies showing the underlying problems. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the impact of the recent climate-induced drought disaster on pastoralists’ livelihoods and the socio-economic determinants of pastoralists’ vulnerability in southern Ethiopia. Mixed, positivist and post-positivist research approaches were used in the design of the study. Both random and purposive sampling procedures were used in this study to select the study sites and respondents or discussants. A questionnaire was used to collect objective data from the randomly selected 371 respondents, while focus group discussions, key informant interviews and observations were used as methods to collect subjective data. While objective data was collected using semi-structured questions, subjective data was collected were using unstructured or open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the objective data, while the subjective data was analyzed using stepwise content analysis. The result shows that severe drought was the most important extreme episode in the area. In addition, the low adaptive capacity (0.29) combined with the high sensitivity (0.41) and exposure factors (0.36) indicate that pastoralists are highly vulnerable (0.49) to climate-related impacts. The index for catastrophic risk of drought episodes in the pastoralist community is scaled at 0.74. This indicates that the severity of drought can cause a 74 % catastrophic impact on pastoralists’ lives, property, natural environment and livelihoods. On the other hand, water scarcity, biodiversity decline, fodder scarcity, female-headed households, price instability, recurrent droughts, weather-dependent livelihoods, low availability of early warning information and poor access to market factors have had positive and significant impacts on high vulnerability and the resulting consequences. Policy makers are therefore encouraged to develop strategies to help pastoralists build adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability to climate hazards. These can be implemented by improving access to water and pasture, by providing early warning information, by providing rangeland management, by diversifying livelihoods and by limiting factors that increase pastoralists' vulnerability and their impacts on their climate-dependent livelihoods.