Abstract:
Climate change has adversely affected Ethiopian Agro-pastoral and pastoralists’ households due
to heavy dependence on agriculturefarming which mostly depends on rainfall. Delaying of
rainfall and rise in temperature has been increasing the exposure of the country to frequent
droughts. This study was conducted in Kebribayah District (woreda), to assess agro-pastoral- pastoral households’ resilience to climate variabilit;-’Descriptive researchdesign was used for
this research where both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed. In order to
meet the objectives of this study, appropriate various data collections and data analyses
techniques were employed. The necessary data was generated from both primary and secondary
sources. Relevant data was gathered from questionnairehousehold survey, focus group
discussion, and Key informant interviews as well; As a result, one pastoral kebele and one agro- pastoral kebeles were selected randomly from the woreda about197 sample households from
both pastoral and agro-pastoral were selected. Simple descriptive statisticswere employed to
analyze the quantitative data. The result indicated that vulnerable parts of the pastoral and agro
pastoral households were identified as women, young girls, the poor landless and less livestock
holders, disable persons; however the poor landless and less livestock holders were among the
highest vulnerable social group, 37.1%.The result concerning the perception of climate
variability also shown that55.3% of the interviewed households agreed that the climate
variability is attributed to the cures/wrath of God. In addition, the result also indicated that the
impacts of the climate variability were manifested mostly in drying up of water ponds, death of
livestock, decrease in crop yields. The findings of this research also identifieda number of
resilient strategies to mitigate adverse impacts of climate variability as, mobility, fodder
management, rain-water harvesting, however fodder management, mobility, rain- waterharvestingcontributed the major strategies with30.5%, 26.4%, and 22.3%, respectively;-On
the other hand, about44.2% of the household respondentsstrongly agreed that the reduction of
milk products among respondentswerethe result of climate variability,- followed by those who
agreed,37.6%. Therefore, it would have been better for both pastoral and agro pastoralists to
put in toimplement relevant types of climate variability resilient strategiessuch ascustomary self- support/culture of supporting each other to stand the adverse effects of climate variability in the
study area.
