Climate variability and indigenous adaptation strategies by Somali pastoralists in Ethiopia

Abstract

Pastoralism is a fragile livelihood system for millions of people around the world and a significant number of that is found in Africa. Proper documentation and understanding of indigenous knowledge and strategies on pastoralism are limited and this study sheds light on location-specific indigenous knowledge and corresponding perceptions of local communities with the support of metrological patterns of weather and climate variability. This is an exploratory study that draws on orally existing indigenous knowledge of adaptation from qualitative data sources, analyzes climate data, and matches it with communities' oral records of major climatic events to validate the accuracy of their perceptions. The results reveals that there is a high climate variability as indicated with a Coefficient of Variation (CV) value of 30, the PCI indicated high rainfall intensity and longer dry periods indicated by the SI values. Almost every year the SI value predicted longer dry season. The community’s perception matched with recorded climate data of the past 36 years and identified 10 major climate extremes orally recounted down in history. Indigenous strategies include indigenous weather forecasts, mating calendar, destocking, herd mobility, herd diversification, traditional rotational grazing system (‘Seri’), and also lists of emerging adaptation strategies utilized as a result of the severity of climate variability and extremes in the region. The results indicates that uncommon adaptation strategies are replacing preexisting pastoralist livelihood system and that indigenous strategies are in need of support to withstand the current and predicted weather and climate variability in the sites. Pastoralists and agro-pastoralists will be in a better position to adapt to the consequences of climate variability and extremes if indigenous institutions are revitalized with innovations.

From crisis to opportunity: climate change benefits livestock production in Somalia

“…Pastoral communities rely on natural resources to make a living (Guillaumont & Simonet, 2011) and are heavily dependent on rainfed grazing for livestock feed supply (Langworthy et al, 2018) . In particular, one third of the total number of cattle in the world are located in Sub Saharan African countries (Ayal, 2022). Livestock production in Somalia contributes more than 60% of the total gross domestic product (Knight-Jones et al, 2014), and nearly 85% of total foreign exchange earnings (Godiah et al, 2015).…”