Browse by Theme: Livelihoods

Pastoral communities in the Borana and Shinile zones of Ethiopia have been changing and adapting their livelihoods to changing environmental conditions for centuries. Recurrent droughts have been a major issue throughout history in the Ethiopian lowlands, and strategies to cope with, and adapt to these droughts are embedded in communities’ traditional social structures and resource management systems.

Despite the sense of determination, pastoralists’ ability to adapt is constrained by many factors including increasing land degradation; conflicts over scarce resources, which limit movement and destroy assets that are key for adaptation (especially in Borana); limited access to information (including that on weather, climate change, markets, as well as pest and disease outbreaks); limited education, skills and access to financial services and markets required to diversify their livelihoods; inadequate government policies, capacities and coordination; demographic pressures; and social and gender inequalities and marginalization, which reduce the voice and adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable.

Enhancing the adaptive capacity of pastoralists will require community-based and community-led interventions, but will also require tailored support from NGOs, donors, and governments and this study explores the issues and options facing all stakeholders.

In 2006, a particularly severe drought hit the Greater Horn of Africa, plunging some 11 million people into crisis. The pastoral areas on the Ethiopia–Kenya–Somalia border were badly affected, with livestock losses of up to 70% and the mass migration of pastoralists out of drought-affected areas. This HPG Policy Brief argues that such catastrophic effects can be averted if pastoralist livelihoods are supported with timely and appropriate livelihoods-based interventions.

This review recognises that addressing pastoralists’ political marginalisation, adopting appropriate cross-border approaches and improving donors’ policies to drought management is only part of broader efforts to address pastoralists’ vulnerability in the Horn of Africa (HoA), which may include efforts to improve access to markets, support viable economic alternatives, enable sustainable resource management to arrest or limit environmental degradation and so on. However, for the purpose of this analysis, this review is limited to the literature that discusses the above three key focus areas in relation to pastoralists’ vulnerability. In addition, this review recognises that pastoralists are a highly diversified group with widely different needs, backgrounds and levels of vulnerability. While there are pastoralists who are relatively wealthy and still able to profitably engage in pastoralism, in recent years an increasing number of pastoralist groups across the HoA have been confronted with a series of livelihoods shocks and have suffered from the progressive weakening of their livelihood systems and increased levels of vulnerability and food insecurity.

This case study evaluates the use of home based case kits as a part of CARE's Social Protection projects, aimed at increasing the capacity of institutions and the most vulnerable in society to better manage risk associated with food insecurity, destitution and HIV and AIDS.

COMLIVE provided CARE/DFID with a unique opportunity to strategically enhance a self-sustaining business model for rural development, linking private sector  markets, organic agricultural production, alternative livelihoods and natural resource management in a way that could effectively address the core needs of poor, vulnerable and food insecure families.

Since 2004, CARE Zambia has been working through a Program Partnership Agreement (PPA) with the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) to implement a number of Social Protection projects, aimed at increasing the capacity of institutions and the most vulnerable in society to better manage risk associated with food insecurity, destitution and HIV and AIDS.

Since 2004, CARE Zambia has been working through a Program Partnership Agreement (PPA) with the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) to implement a number of Social Protection projects, aimed at increasing the capacity of institutions and the most vulnerable in society to better manage the risks associated with food insecurity, destitution and HIV and AIDS.