Adaptation to Climate Change in the Pastoral and Agropastoral Systems of Borana, South Ethiopia: Options and Barriers

The pastoral and agropastoral systems of the Borana in southern Ethiopia are highly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. Assistance to enable these smallholders to successfully adapt to future climate change in locally relevant ways can be usefully informed by the analysis and better understanding of past and ongoing adaptation. We conducted farm household surveys, focus group discussions, expert consultations and secondary data collation in 2012 in the Borana. The study employed a combination of Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework to analyse how climate change put pressure on pastoral and agropastoral farming systems and livelihoods, and Pelling’s (2011) typological framework to analyse local adaptation responses. Results showed that pastoral and agropastoral households, their communities and institutions adopted a wide range of adaptation options primarily through adjusting their farming practices and diversifying into non-pastoral livelihoods. The smallholders primarily pursued a resilience approach to adaptation with short term goals intended to avoid system disruptions instead of long-term transformational approaches that significantly address the root causes of vulnerability. A range of barriers constrained local adaptive capacity and shaped routes for adaptation. Adaptation pathways that address critical barriers to adapt, integrate indigenous institutions into adaptation and link adaptation with local development process are necessary to bring long-term and non-marginal, major changes that reduce vulnerability and ensure co-benefit of improving livelihoods.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  American Journal of Climate Change

• Publication date

  2019-01-24

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Geography, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.4236/AJCC.2019.81003
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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