Ethiopians Apply Climate Adaptation Efforts Amid Droughts

Pastoralists and agropastoralists across Ethiopia have used traditional knowledge and weather forecasting to prepare for and manage drought conditions for generations. However, worsening droughts, flash floods, and shifting weather patterns make it difficult for pastoralists to rely solely on indigenous practices and knowledge.

Researchers suggest that pastoralists combine their traditional knowledge with innovations, such as real-time information on water conditions and accurate weather forecasts, to help them adapt to worsening droughts. Combining traditional farming knowledge with innovation and technology will form an efficient climate adaptation strategy for Ethiopian pastoralists.

Ethiopian pastoralists live a nomadic way of life. They wander around the area to seek water and grass for their livestock; for many, this is the only skill and livelihood they possess.

Climate change makes droughts more frequent, harming their livelihoods and economic situation. Flash floods after dry spells make the parched lands incapable of absorbing and storing water underground, unlike in the past, when rain was absorbed and nourished the ground.

The Mongabay article tells the story of pastoralists in Ethiopia who have raised livestock and cattle for generations. However, prolonged droughts, particularly the 2021 drought, which withheld rain for 14 months, have almost decimated their livestock.

These pastoralists have relied on indigenous knowledge and strategies to raise and multiply their livestock, including mating calendars, herd mobility, destocking (which occurs during severe droughts and sells livestock immediately), rotational grazing systems, and weather forecasting.

They dug water holes, called birkads, to store water underground as the last resort when all other alternatives to look for water sources were exhausted, including moving around for up to hundreds of kilometres to look for water. However, climate change is making more droughts frequent, bringing unpredictable dry spells and drying out these birkads, calling on pastoralists to respond urgently to the threats of climate change.

A 2024 study, “Climate variability and indigenous adaptation strategies by Somali pastoralists in Ethiopia,” is an exploratory study that draws on existing indigenous knowledge of adaptation from qualitative data sources, analyses climate data, and matches it with communities’ oral records of major climatic events to validate the accuracy of their perceptions. Researchers found that the indigenous oral records of extremes with recorded climate data of more than three decades could also identify ten major climate extremes orally in history.

Pastoralism a critical livelihood in Africa

Pastoralism provides a sole means of 40 subsistence for about 200 million people worldwide, most of whom are in Africa. The pastoralists’ dependency on livestock is a matter of survival for them. In Ethiopia, the pastoral sector contributes about 20% of the national GDP. However, the sector is constantly endangered due to recurrent drought, erratic rainfall, rangeland degradation, bush encroachment, expansion of cropland, obstruction of seasonal migration routes, and, hence, scarcity of pasture and water.

The study also finds that pastoralists increasingly use emerging adaptation strategies to cope with extreme climate variability. These strategies include petty trading in milk and meat, charcoal, growing crops like maize, sorghum, and Khat, and casual labour. Indigenous practices need support to withstand current and future climate variability. When traditional knowledge is combined with innovation, indigenous knowledge and practices will be revitalised, and pastoralists can better adapt to climate change impacts.

Merging traditional knowledge with innovation

The study recommends that if pastoral households are to be climate resilient, water-related interventions such as water harvesting during good rainy seasons are essential.

A German development agency, GIZ, works with local partners to develop water-spreading weirs (WSWs). These structures, made of natural stone and concrete, are used to dam the flow of floodwater runoff. Weirs are low dams that retain rain and floodwaters long enough to percolate underground, especially in the lowlands of Ethiopia’s Afar, Somali, Oromia and South Ethiopia regions. These low dams can also help deposit soils to regenerate and create productive land.

Indigenous ways to predict the weather by observing changes in the sky and the environment are increasingly complex, as weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. This traditional method could be combined with innovative platforms that monitor water levels where pastoralists might migrate in search of water. Spreading these water tracking systems across the targeted regions’ water points will provide pastoralists with real-time information showing water levels at each point.

Mongabay reports that the regional government also supports building more water holes or water storage wells to help locals gain more access to water and innovative weather forecasting tools.

Read the study to learn more about how Africa’s pastoralists adapt to climate change: Climate variability and Indigenous adaptation strategies by Somali pastoralists in Ethiopia