VULNERABILITY OF PASTORALISTS’ LIVELIHOOD TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND ADAPTATION OPTIONS IN DILLO DISTRICT OF BORENA ZONE, OROMIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

In pastoral communities of Ethiopia where livelihood is vulnerable to climate change, irregular rainfall and high temperature affect livestock adversely. Assessing the level of livelihood vulnerability of pastoralists is essential to identify better adaptation strategies to climate change. Thus, this study assessed vulnerability of pastoralists’ livelihood to climate change and adaptation options at Dillo District of Borena zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. Accordingly, historical climate data (1989-2018) was collected from National Meteorological Agency (NMA) of Ethiopia. In addition, data of livelihood vulnerability and adaptation options were collected from a total of 145 households that were randomly selected. The Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were employed to assess trends of rainfall and temperature. Climate data and vulnerability of pastoralists’ livelihood were analyzed by INSTAT+v.3.36 and XL-2010 whereas adaptation options used by the pastoralists were analyzed using Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (version 20). The results revealed a decreasing trend for both annual (- 8.226 mm/year) and seasonal (-5.53 mm/year for belg and -0.956 mm/year for bega) rainfall during the study period. In contrast, the annual minimum and maximum temperature showed an increasing trend with a magnitude of 0.071 and 0.006 0C per year respectively. Overall, Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) for Golbo and Malbe were 0.41 and 0.32 respectively, indicating Golbo was more vulnerable to climate change as compared with Malbe. Similarly, the LVI of Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change analysis result showed that Golbo (0.275) was more vulnerable than Malbe (0.238). Increasing livestock mobility and casual labor as a source of income were mostly used adaptation options in the study area. More emphasis should be given to pastoralists of the study area especially to Golbo zone by concerned bodies in order to improve their resilience to changes in climate variables. Further research is needed to adopt model in the future to identify more suitable adaptation options in the area