The Quest for Greener Pastures: Evaluating the Livelihoods Impacts of Providing Vegetation Condition Maps to Pastoralists in Eastern Africa

Abstract

Pastoral households are faced with making migration decisions under increasing uncertainty about resource availability and limited coping strategies due to mounting socioeconomic and climatic stressors. We assess the potential of providing vegetation condition maps to support the migration decisions of pastoralists in Ethiopia and Tanzania and the impact of map usage on their herd condition and size. The maps were generated from remotely sensed data using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a proxy for vegetation condition and overlain with pastoralists' preferred grazing areas. We surveyed pastoralists before maps were distributed (baseline), and approximately a year (midline), and two years (endline) after map distribution began. Map adopters in both countries reported an overwhelmingly positive experience and stated the maps were accurate and helpful. However, the use of maps for migration decisions was low in the follow-up periods, partly due to challenges in map distribution (26% and 2% in Ethiopia; and 35% and 29% in Tanzania at midline and endline respectively). Map usage was associated with improved animal condition in Tanzania, but we find no causal evidence that map usage affected herd size in the randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia.