Abstract
This paper explores adaptations and the perceived responses of success to the effects of climate variability on agricultural production in selected highland and lowland areas of Ethiopia based on primary and secondary data obtained from different sets of stakeholders using a mixed research approach. This study reveals that pastoralists and farmers are employing agricultural and non-agricultural responses at various levels to climate variability. However, generally, highland farmers’ have more coping and adaptation options both in agricultural and non-agricultural livelihood practices. Moreover, the majority of maladaptation options are practiced by farmers. Similarly, female-headed households showed more adaptive response options than their male counterparts who suffered from cultural prejudice. Some existing adaptation practices are hardly useful in times of severe drought where pastoralists and farmers suffer partial or total crop failure and mass death of livestock. In this case, they could not sustain their life without relief aid. Pastoralists and farmers perceived adaptation success to climate variability is determined by differences in age, income, gender and education. Thus, only the rich, educated and the young had positively perceived the success of their responses to climate variability. In other words, there are variations in objective adaptive capacity and not all pastoralists and farmers possess the subjective factor (motivation) for adaptation to climate variability. The study concludes that future adaptation strategies should capitalize on preparing pastoralists and farmers for extreme scenarios.
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Notes
- 1.
Woreda is an administrative unit equivalent to a district.
- 2.
Kebele is the smallest administrative unit equivalent to a peasant association in the woreda.
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Ayal, D.Y., Abshare, M.W., Desta, S., Leal Filho, W. (2017). Pastoralists and Farmers Coping and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Their Perceived Success in Ethiopia. In: Leal Filho, W., Belay, S., Kalangu, J., Menas, W., Munishi, P., Musiyiwa, K. (eds) Climate Change Adaptation in Africa. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49520-0_28
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