Pastoral system in the face of climate variability: household adaptation strategies in Borana Rangelands, Southern Ethiopia

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Socioecological systems transformations in Borana rangelands have reduced the resilience of the Borana pastoral system. However, Borana pastoral households have not been passive victims; rather, they have demonstrated significant capabilities to respond to their changing environment through technical and institutional innovations. This paper examined Borana pastoral households’ adaptive responses to deal with contemporary climate and sociopolitical variations and factors determining households’ adaptation patterns. The study is based on household survey data generated from in-depth interview of 186 households drawn from six purposively selected pastoral associations in Yabello district in southern Ethiopia. To analyze the collected data, both descriptive statistics such as mean, frequency, independent-sample t test, and Chi-square test and econometric model were employed. Most of the Borana pastoral households were found to have already embraced diverse non-pastoral activities such as crop farming to sustain their life in the face of mounting internal and external pressures. Nevertheless, they are still less likely to totally abandon pastoral ways of life. The model outputs revealed that the likelihood of pastoral households to use herd mobility as an adaptive response is explained by availability of labor force, size of livestock holdings, and access to climate information. Interestingly, the size of livestock holdings determined the pastoral household’s adaptation patterns, indicating that livestock production still plays major economic and sociocultural roles in Borana pastoral contexts. Based on the findings, it is recommended that pastoral responses such as long-established mobility practice and current herd diversifications should be backed by responsive institutional support services. Finally, the study suggests that current hasty private range enclosures for both crop cultivation and fodder reserves should be reframed and supported by well-structured institutions for sustainable future and equitable resource use rights.