CHANGING CLIMATES, CHANGING LIVES

© Samuel Hauenstein Swan

This study examines the vulnerability of farmers and herders in agro-pastoral and
pastoral areas in Ethiopia and Mali, and shows how they are adapting to climate
variability and change. It focuses on peopleʼs perceptions and experience at the
household level, and the role of local institutions in supporting adaptation and
improving food security.
People’s livelihoods in Africa are under threat from climate variability and change. Adaptation is vital in order to ensure food security
and to build resilience now and in the future. Preliminary findings from the case studies show that long-term drought trends over
previous decades and increasingly erratic weather in the present have undermined access to assets. At the same time, these factors
have amplified the effect of other stressors, such as conflict and market fluctuations, on people’s livelihoods. These findings and
recommendations should help to guide the implementation of adaptation under a global post-2012 climate change agreement.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS TO SUPPORT ADAPTATION AND INCREASE FOOD SECURITY

Ë Strengthen existing household adaptive capacities, strategies and community solidarity, in order to avoid negative
coping mechanisms that lead to a loss in assets.
Ë Increase the options of the poorest people to diversify their livelihoods, by improving their access to and sustainable
use of assets such as agricultural inputs, natural resources and credit, particularly during critical hunger periods.
Ë Strengthen existing local institutions with financial and technical support so that they can boost household strategies
(regardless of the wealth, gender or ethnic identity of household members) and fill gaps in institutional support.
Ë Integrate adaptation into national development policies, plans and poverty reduction, with a joined up approach
between agriculture, water, nutrition, the environment, climate change and disasters. Ensure that programmes are
predictable and longer-term in order to build resilience to climatic and economic shocks.

ACF INTERNATIONAL - INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES - TEARFUND - ODES MALI - A-Z CONSULT - INSTITUTChanging
D’ECONOMIE RURALE
climates, DU MALI
changing lives 1
 IN WHAT WAYS DO FARMERS AND HERDERS PERCEIVE THE CLIMATE AS CHANGING?
Communities are no longer confident about rainfall patterns. Over the past ten
years the rain has become increasingly unpredictable and erratic; the seasonal
rains have started later and finished earlier. This is detrimental to people’s key
assets, cattle and farmland, which are vulnerable to the climate. There is less good-
quality pasture, which means people have to travel farther for longer periods to find
pasture and water and their cows yield insufficient milk. Conflict over shared grazing
and water resources has increased between local people and those from different
areas passing through. Recurrent drought has also significantly reduced harvests
and extended hunger gaps.

© Samuel Hauenstein Swan

Previously there was one drought every eight years. Now six out
of eight years will be drought. Changes have become very obvious
in the past 16 years.
(Focus Group Discussion, Dhire, Ethiopia)

HOW ARE THE CHANGES AFFECTING PEOPLE’S LIVELIHOODS?

In Mali, higher temperatures in recent years have resulted in new pest infestations affecting crops. People report fatigue, weakness
and increased susceptibility to disease, in both Ethiopia and Mali, making it difficult to complete their daily work. Children, middle-aged
and elderly people often say, ‘The sun is making us very tired.’

• Reduced livelihood resilience

In both case study areas, livelihood diversification is enabling households to build resilience by spreading risk. There are many
diversification options within the agricultural sector and beyond. People are already making fundamental changes to their livelihoods
in order to deal with the scarcity of natural resources. But a high degree of climate variability, even at the local level, reduces their
livelihood resilience and makes decision making more complicated.
Pastoralists are diversifying in order to generate more income, turning to agriculture
and, in Mali, fisheries. Drought and unpredictable rainfall have resulted in insufficient
In 1999, after our crop failed
harvests, leaving people more reliant on the market to cover their basic food needs. my husband migrated to Marsabet
People are also vulnerable to high and unpredictable prices for food and farming in Kenya for work. The first year,
inputs. For example, price fluctuations have undermined the profitability of small
he found work in house-building
businesses such as women’s groups selling sugar, salt and tea, preventing them
from repaying their debts. This in turn has made institutions more reluctant to give as a carpenter’s assistant. He was
credit to poor households, thereby minimising their options for generating income. sending money for me to buy food
Labour migration which began in response to severe drought in the 1970s has for our children, but for the last six
escalated, and is now part of everyday life for many rural households in Ethiopia
and Mali. Young men seek work more frequently outside their villages and in other
months he’s had no job, so he’s
countries, because it is increasingly difficult to secure livelihoods from their own land. started making charcoal.
But in many cases remittances are insufficient or do not reach the women, children
(Adde Mesule Gegalo Bante, 45, mother of six
and elderly in time, making them more vulnerable and increasing their food insecurity
children, Tulluwato village, Ethiopia)
during the hunger gap.

• Coping and adapting with limited choices

The research revealed a broad range of livelihood strategies that people use to respond to livelihood shocks and stressors. These
may incorporate elements of both coping and adaptation. The type of activity employed will depend largely on a household’s socio-
economic status. It is clear that poorer segments of rural society, whether in agro-pastoral or pastoral areas, will have fewer options
to choose from, whereas better-off households will have more opportunities available.

The poorest are hit hardest by climate-related and other stressors – for example, people who borrow cattle have been unable to
plough their own land in time for planting because they were working on others’ land. Poor households also have limited options
for diversifying their livelihoods. These households are locked into the same strategies (eg migration, asset depletion, selling natural

2 Changing climates, changing lives

resources, reducing food intake) no matter what shock they’re facing, even though they know that these actions are likely to increase
their vulnerability to future shocks. They have no viable alternatives. For example, selling charcoal and forest products has contributed
to local deforestation, resulting in reduced tree cover. Communities see a link between loss of forest cover and rainfall, as this quote
from an agro-pastoral area in Ethiopia shows:

The bare land that you see now was once forest; we have destroyed it. Now that we’ve lost the rain, we
get only heat. I heard that trees bring rain. We cut down the trees, so I know that we are making the rain go
away. What can I do? I have no choice.
(Focus Group Discussion, Dhire, Ethiopia)

When people cannot meet their basic household needs, care for the natural environment may be a secondary concern. Even richer
groups have experienced an increasing feeling of insecurity, and consequently less resilience to shocks. The frequency and multiple
nature of shocks means that the better-off households are losing their key assets so quickly that they can drop to the poor or very
poor wealth group within a season.

• Reduced solidarity
Mutual support between households has become weaker. Previously the
traditional kinship system would kick in during times of severe drought. Before 1973 there was strong solidarity
The poorest households would be supported by those better off, through between the different families. If a family did
gifts of food and occasionally small livestock. However, as times have not have food to eat, another would help and
become tougher for all, this has changed. Middle-income and better-off assets were shared. Nowadays it is every man
households which would previously have been in a position to assist those
with limited access to resources are no longer able to do so. It has become
for himself.
(Lalla Arhabou, Koissa, Mali)
a challenge even to meet their own needs.

HOW ARE LOCAL INSTITUTIONS SUPPORTING AND HINDERING ADAPTATION?

• Access to resources
This study examined local institutions – social structures and organisations – and their role in adaptation. The most common types
of institution documented include government agencies, NGOs and civil society organisations, government rules and regulations
for managing rangelands and forests, as well as traditional ruling systems. Their core function in terms of adaptation is determining
access to key resources such as pasture, water resources and credit.

In Ethiopia, the Gada is a traditional rule system with strong links to formal governance. The Gada regulates the use of resources by,
for example, preserving particular areas for pasture regeneration, governing access to village boreholes, and identifying beneficiaries
of government food aid. In Mali, credit institutions provide loans and local livestock; farmers’ and fisheries’ organisations provide credit
and access to markets, and cereal banks help to even out shocks from crop failure and price fluctuations.

• The obstacles of gender, poverty and ethnicity

However, access to these benefits is not equally distributed: to a large extent it is
dependent on gender, wealth and in some cases ethnic divisions. For example,
traditionally only men have a say in the Gada system in Ethiopia. The poorest and
most vulnerable households are excluded from credit systems and other types of
support because they are not literate or do not have the minimum level of inputs
required. Elite networks also play a role in excluding the poorest: in one village,
wealthier groups described local institutions as a tight network of bodies offering
entrepreneurial opportunities, while the poorer groups of the very same village
described it as a loose, scattered field of external and local service providers from
within and outside the community, serving (and failing) to meet their basic needs.
© Samuel Hauenstein Swan

• The influence of climatic, social and economic factors

Institutions are changing, and so is people’s ability to use them. In both
countries, communities perceived a progressive weakening of local authority
and traditional systems of mutual support and sharing. In Ethiopia, for example,

Changing climates, changing lives 3

 conflict is perceived to be eroding the authority of traditional systems such as
the Gada. But not all changes have been bad: access to credit was deemed Today we do the work of men. We
better than before in both countries. In Ethiopia, informal access to the Gada have become stronger than them. We bed
for women has increased. In Mali, the emergence of women’s organisations
has opened up new opportunities for women.
out rice and collect wild herbs. In earlier
Changes to institutions are seen to be a result of many factors, including days, women would not dare to go out
deteriorating social cohesion, market changes, population growth and, there. Without the women’s associations,
importantly, an increasingly erratic climate, undermining institutions. Historically,
you would not have seen any women
key climate shocks such as the droughts in the 1970s and 1980s led to major
upheavals in local structures. Over recent years, the increasing severity and around.
number of stressors, including climate, has reduced the availability of resources A 35 year old widow from Kardjime, Gao, Mali.
and people’s access to them.

• Complex outcomes
Multiple stressors and variable patterns of access to institutions produce complex outcomes among different social groups. This study
has found that some institutional structures have become stronger, while others have been eroded. In Ethiopia, the Productive Safety
Net Programme (PSNP) has helped fill the gap left by weakening local institutions. The PSNP provides predictable resource transfers in
the form of safety nets and/or credit, also protecting poorer households from asset depletion. In Mali, the presence of government has
significantly decreased since political transformation in the early 1990s. Arbitrary patterns of both governmental and NGO emergency
response predominate. There has been limited long-term development support that helps build farmers’ assets or knowledge. Some
recent programmes were seen as benefiting mainly wealthy pastoralists and farmers, although with some ‘trickle down’ effects for
poorer groups through employment.

METHODOLOGY
The research was conducted from May to October 2009 in agro-pastoral and pastoral areas in Borana, southern Ethiopia, and in Gao
and Mopti, Mali. The case studies are based on qualitative research tools, and methods included semi-structured interviews, informal
interviews, oral testimonies and a variety of Participatory Rural Appraisal-based focus group discussions. The analytical framework
builds on the Sustainable Livelihoods framework, putting particular emphasis on access to resources, local strategies and institutions,
as part of ensuring food security.

This is a prelude to the full report which will be released in early 2010.

© ACF, IDS, Tearfund, December 2009

Contact for more information:

Morwenna Sullivan : m.sullivan@aahuk.org
Lars Otto Naess : l.naess@ids.ac.uk
Jo Khinmaung : Jo.Khinmaung@tearfund.org

Action Against Hunger (ACF)

First Floor, Rear Premises, 161-163 Greenwich High Road, London, SE10
8JA - UK
www.actionagainsthunger.org/

Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RE - UK
www.ids.ac.uk/climatechange/

Tearfund
Tearfund, 100 Church Road, Teddington, TW11 8QE - UK
www.tearfund.org/

Contributed to by:
Lars Otto Naess (IDS), Morwenna Sullivan (ACF), Jo Khinmaung (Tearfund),
Agnès Otzelberger (IDS), Amdissa Teshome (A-Z Consult), Bayou Aberra (ACF),
Youssouf Cissé (Institut d’Economie Rurale), Louka Daou (ODES MALI) and Supported by
Philippe Crahay (ACF)
Photos by: Samuel Hauenstein Swan (ACF)
Design: Céline Beuvin
4 Changing climates, changing lives