ACT Members to Help Ethiopian Pastoralists Adapt to Climate Change

One week after Tearfund warned that the West must shoulder Africa’s climate change burden, members of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International have warned that climate conditions will only become more erratic, bringing a whole host of challenges to Ethiopia’s farmers.

|TOP|Christian Aid, another member of ACT responding to the drought in Ethiopia, said that the situation remains difficult in the region and that the problem runs much deeper than ‘too much or too little rain’.

Christina Ruiz, senior emergency officer for Christian Aid, warned that the main problem facing pastoralists and aid agencies working in the region is the increasingly extreme and erratic weather patterns.

The torrential rains that finally came in April ended the struggle of two years of drought but brought with them the new crisis of widespread flooding and loss of homesteads and livestock.

According to one report, 55 cows were killed after being swept away by the floods, a devastating loss to a region that depends on the breeding of cattle to sustain livelihoods

“Pastoralists work in seasons,” she said. “Their life is organised around seasonality. This extreme weather has destabilised their whole system.

|AD|“If a lot of water comes in a very short time, they have no system to store it. They haven’t the resources, money or time to adapt to this unprecedented level of unpredictability. To do this they need support.”

In response to the emergency, a number of animal feeding centres have been opened up by ACT member the Ethiopian Evangelical Church of Mekane Yesus (EECMY), where pastoralists can bring some of their most prized breeding cows to be fed and watered.

The new feeding centres are essential to the recovery process as they will play a key role in helping pastoralists restock their herds.

The feeding centres have proven a great success with many of the cows that survived both the drought and the rains returning to full health through the regular nourishment. Other cattle have been able to return with their owners to the fields.

EECMY, Christian Aid and other members of ACT are working with pastoralist communities to develop ways that will help pastoralists adapt to the changing climate, including the digging of more wells and ponds and the installation of new tanks to harvest rain water that will allow the pastoralist communities to cope with longer periods of drought.