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Pastoralists under threat continuum: quantifying vulnerabilities of pastoralists to climate variability in southern Ethiopia

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Abstract

Climate variability is emerging as a major threat to Ethiopian pastoralists. Increased vulnerability to climate variability not only wrecked pastoralists' livelihoods but also eroded scarce resource management practices. The objective of this research was to investigate the status of pastoralists' vulnerability to climate variability in the Burkitu watershed in Southern Ethiopia. The Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) was used in the study to assess household vulnerability to climate variability through direct household surveys. To select 340 sample respondents, multistage sampling techniques were used. Data on socioeconomic and biophysical attributes were collected and combined into indices, from which vulnerability scores for each watershed unit were calculated. There was some variation in the level of vulnerability across watershed units. The outlet had a higher vulnerability score (0.73) due to the pastoralists' higher level of exposure and low adaptive capacity status. The upper watershed unit was identified as having a lower level of vulnerability with a score of (0.19), whereas the middle watershed unit has an intermediate level of vulnerability (0.44). Therefore, any interventions aimed at improving pastoralists' livelihood resilience should concentrate on addressing characteristics that exacerbate households' exposure to climate variability, thereby increasing adaptive capacities.

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Abbreviations

UNOCHA:

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UNISDR:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

EMA:

Ethiopian Map Agency

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

TLU:

Tropical Livestock Unit

FGD:

Focused Group Discussion

LVI:

Livelihood Vulnerability Index

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Acknowledgements

We thank Bule Hora University for partially funding this research work. Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency provided required data for the research. Therefore, we would like to thank the organization. Pastor household heads in the area are strongly acknowledged for their genuine responses to the questions and providing socio-economic data that we were in need.

Funding

The research was partially funded by Bule Hora University for the corresponding author in his PhD work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Arba Minch University, Arba Minch, Ethiopia

    Mekuria Guye

  2. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Bule Hora University, Bule Hora, Ethiopia

    Mekuria Guye

  3. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Dilla University, Dilla, Ethiopia

    Abiyot Legesse & Yimer Mohammed

Authors
  1. Mekuria Guye
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  2. Abiyot Legesse
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  3. Yimer Mohammed
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Contributions

The first author (MGH) collected data, analyzed and made the final write up which is part of his Doctoral thesis in Disaster Risk Management at Arba Minch University, Ethiopia. The second (AL) and third (YM) authors commented and edited the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mekuria Guye.

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Guye, M., Legesse, A. & Mohammed, Y. Pastoralists under threat continuum: quantifying vulnerabilities of pastoralists to climate variability in southern Ethiopia. GeoJournal 88, 1785–1806 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10710-8

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