Ethiopia

The outreach and action-research component of the Pastoral Risk Management (PARIMA) project began with a focus on the Borana Plateau of southern Ethiopia in 2000. The goal was to use participatory methods to learn about development needs and apply the knowledge gained to benefit local communities. Today it is clear that the project has had positive impacts on the lives of thousands of people. The full project report (65pp) can be downloaded by clicking on "Open Link" at right.

A recent Science article summarizes the report:

Capacity Building Helps Pastoral Women Transform Impoverished Communities in Ethiopia
Science, Volume 334, Number 6061, pages 1394-1398.
D. Layne Coppock, Solomon Desta, Seyoum Tezera, Getachew Gebru

Abstract: Poverty, drought, and hunger devastate people on Africa’s rangelands. The authors used an action-oriented approach from 2000-4 to build capacity among thousands of pastoralists to diversify livelihoods, improve living standards, and enhance livestock marketing. The process included collective action, microfinance, and participatory education. Poor women—previously burdened by domestic chores—became leaders and rapidly changed their communities. Drought occurred in 2005-8. The authors assessed intervention effects on household drought-resilience with a quasi-experimental format that incorporated survey-based comparisons of treatment groups with ex post controls. Interventions led to major improvements in trends for quality of life, wealth accumulation, hunger reduction, and risk management.

In this report, Oxfam America shares project updates and key accomplishments of the July – September 2011 quarter, and provides detailed information on the enrollment results of the third annual offering of weather insurance in Ethiopia.

Publication Summary: For the 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar a day who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, vulnerability to weather-related shocks is a constant threat to security and well-being. As climate change drives an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural hazards, the challenges faced by food-insecure communities struggling to improve their lives and livelihoods will also increase. The question of how to build rural resilience against weather-related risk is critical for addressing global poverty.

In response to this challenge, in 2007, Oxfam America, together with local and international partners,1 launched a pilot program called HARITA, or Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation, to work with farmers on building their resilience to climate change. Today, the program has grown to become Oxfam’s Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4 (http://www.oxfamamerica.org/issues/insurance/). Initiated as a result of the partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme announced at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference, R4 builds upon the highly successful growth of the multiyear HARITA pilot in Ethiopia.

HARITA, in its three years of delivery in Ethiopia’s northernmost state of Tigray, has shown promising results for replication. More than 1,300 households participated in HARITA in 2010, up from 200 in its first year. In the 2011 agricultural season, HARITA expanded its outreach by 10 times with more than 13,000 farmers in 43 villages signing up for insurance.

Rainfall variability has adverse impacts on agriculture production. Rainfall variability experienced in sub-Saharan Africa already has detrimental impacts on crop production. Indeed, too much or too little water due to erratic rainfall and insufficient storage capacity wields adverse impacts on food security. Climate change is widely predicted to increase rainfall variability in sub-Saharan Africa, with the effect of increasing droughts and floods. For many millions of smallholder farmers, reliable access to water is the difference between plenty and famine. It is therefore essential to find ways to cope with existing and increasing variability in rainfall, as well as other effects of climate change like changes in temperature patterns.

This factsheet was developed as part of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Climate-Smart Agriculture Workshop. The workshop focused on approaches for effective program design of climate-smart agriculture in support of both country and regional CAADP investment plans. Climate-smart agriculture incorporates practices that increase productivity, efficiency, resilience, adaptive capacity, and mitigation potential of production systems.

This presentation by Lena Heron (USAID Bureau for Food Security), Ruth Vargas Hill (IFPRI),  Kimberly Pfeifer (Oxfam America) was part of the Feed The Future CSO Stakeholder Meeting,"Risk Management: How can risk transfer help?"

This presentation by Ruth Vargas Hill (International Food Policy Research Institute) was part of the Feed The Future CSO Stakeholder Meeting,"Risk Management: How can risk transfer help?"

This presentation by Kimberly Pfeifer (Oxfam America) was part of the Feed The Future CSO Stakeholder Meeting,"Risk Management: How can risk transfer help?"