Browse by Theme: Livelihoods

Boran, Gabra and Garri pastoralists in the border areas of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia have long relied on the management of natural resources to maximise land use and sustain livestock productivity. Managing herd movements plays a key role in rangeland management, with some areas suitable for use during the dry season and some during the wet season.

The rangeland as a whole constitutes a communally owned economic resource that must be shared among the different pastoralist ethnic groups and clans living in the area. They have developed an institutional system of primary and secondary rights of access with procedures and principles for negotiations between different pastoralist groups to regulate the sharing of water and pasture.

This indigenous institutional framework governs the mobility of herders and their livestock, including across the international border, maintains and restores collaboration among clans and ethnic groups and provides a framework for managing disputes and conflict.

Significant progress has been made among the negotiators so far this year on the system for providing information on REDD+ safeguards, however there is still much work to do as Parties consider text by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA) for a COP decision.

This ACCRA brief summarises research conducted by the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) in three sites in Ethiopia in 2010-11. This research analysed meterological data and community perceptions and was conducted by Haramaya University.

Federal officials from Ministry of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Authority took part in validating the research, alongside colleagues from various Wereda and Regional bureaus in Oromiya, Afar and Amhara Regional States.

The brief analyses the impacts of climate hazards, variability and change on livelihoods in all three locations, and concludes with key recommendations for action.

With agriculture providing about 70% of Uganda’s export earnings and the primary economic activity for much of its population, livelihoods are particularly sensitive to the fluctuations and uncertainties of seasonal rainfall − whether premature, delayed, prolonged or failed.

The Ugandan Ministry of Water and Environment recognises climate as ‘not only a natural resource, but a key determinant of the status of other natural resources’.

The Ugandan government is also concerned about climate variability to the extent that it has listed climate change as a key factor to consider in the country’s development.

Research by the New Economics Foundation and CARE International in Garissa, Kenya, has found that investing in community-based adaptation makes strong economic sense, even in volatile environments. According to the research, investing $1 in adaptation generates between $1.45 and $3.03 of wealth for communities. And the costs of intervention were 2.6 times lower on average than the costs of not addressing climate change and extreme weather events.

Pastoral areas in the Horn of Africa are frequently seen as a region of poverty and constant crisis, where repeated rain failures leave millions of people dependent on food aid. The long-term erosion of pastoralists’ resilience is ascribed to various causes: a degraded range, the loss of key grazing lands, increasing population pressure and conflict. But pastoralism is also a modern industry, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars each year from a thriving international trade, creating an increasingly commercialised livestock-owning class coexist-ing with an ever poorer majority.

This presents a dual challenge. How can this vital economic sector be supported, at the same time as sup-porting the majority of pastoralists to remain independent, with resilient livelihoods?

Mariamo Amade is a 35 year old woman. She and her husband are from the Gelo-Sede community, Angoche district, a community on the northern coast of Mozambique. The main livelihoods in the community are fishing and farming and the main crops produced are cassava and beans. Mariamo and her husband, as well as many of their neighbours, were victims of the cyclone Jokwe which affected many communities in Angoche district, in March 2008.