Climate information and scenario planning to prepare for El Ni駉

Dry lowland areas of Ethiopia are among the regions most affected by the global change in climate. Pastoralist communities living in these ecosystems are increasingly affected severely by climatic hazards, such as drought and more erratic and unpredictable rainfall.

However, pastoralists are already experts in adaptive management, having lived and adapted to environmental challenges for hundreds of years. Part of their adaptive management capacity includes customary weather forecast systems, using the skills and knowledge acquired through generations.

In pastoral communities, individuals are often recognised and valued for having the skills to interpret weather signals. In the Borana pastoral regions, Ayyantu (a term for those who look at astronomical features), Uchu (those who read animal intestines) and Waragu (those who study
animal behaviours) are all recognised as sources of climate information.

At the same time, scientific meteorological forecast information has not been widely available to pastoral communities. However, more recently, the Government of Ethiopia National Meteorological Agency (NMA) is now recognised for its increasingly important role in national,
regional and local responses to climate change, particularly the importance of weather forecast information.

Most work to date has been targeted towards the national NMA, with training and capacitybuilding activities. Local level NMA office activity and information to support communities remains limited.

The USAID-funded Pastoral Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion (PRIME) project implemented by a consortium led by Mercy Corp and CARE has introduced the facilitation of regular PSP forums to help pastoral communities access and interpret climate information to inform their seasonal decision-making.

These forums bring together both traditional weather and scientific NMA forecasters, community leaders, representative bodies and local government agencies to produce blended forecasts and weather advisories to be disseminated to pastoral and agopastoral communities.

The PSP approach is underpinned by collective sharing and analysis of past and future weather patterns and predictions, bringing together different stakeholders, decision makers and information providers on an equal platform.

It is also dedicated to understanding people’s needs; with this goal guiding what information and advisories should be generated. PSP forums produce quality weather information with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. This enables them to assist pastoralists in making informed decisions on appropriate actions in relation to anticipated weather-related hazards or shocks.

PSP for El Niño preparedness in the Afar region

National forecasts at the time predicted that the El Niño event of 2015 was likely to last through 2015 and possibly extend into early 2016, potentially becoming one of the strongest El Niños of the last 40 years. The south and eastern parts of Afar, Central and northeastern Tigray, along
with the south and central Somali regions were expected to be most impacted by El Niño.

However, this national level of information was not specific enough to help with local decision-making. PSP workshops were conducted in districts under the PRIME project as part of annual pre-season planning. The weather forecasts and advice generated provided more localised information for pastoral communities to prepare for the impacts of El Niño.

Awash Fentale woreda in the Afar region was one of the districts hardest hit by the 2015 El Niño-driven drought. In February 2015, at its early stages, a PSP workshop was held in the district.

The process concerned the forthcoming rainy season, called Sugum in the local language, which runs from late February to early May and the workshop brought together 58 participants, including:

• the regional branch of the National
Meteorological Agency (NMA)
• traditional weather forecasters
• clan leaders
• pasture scouts
• representatives of women’s groups
• relevant experts from the Woreda-level
government, including:
• pastoral and agricultural
development officers
• crop and livestock extension
agents
• health officers
• early warning officers.

The meteorological agency presented a review of the rainfall performance during the previous rainy period, Karma in Afari language (known as kiremt nationally), and predictions for the Sugum. The traditional weather forecasters also presented their observations and predictions and were generally in agreement with the scientific projections, notably in terms of predicting a late start to the rains.

Community members stressed that this overall assessment did not capture the variability experienced locally, and presented their own experiences and observations for the Sugum to feed into the development of the agreed weather scenarios. Participants also discussed the current status of key crisis indicators, noting that pasture and water were becoming scarce.

Another shared prediction was the potential late arrival of the early rains, Lahirobu (meaning ‘cattle rains’ in the local language). The Lahirobu rains generally last a couple of days and precede the main Sugum rains by about four weeks. They are critical for livestock health because they initiate the growth of fodder after the dry season.

In addition to weather scenarios, the associated hazards, risks, preparedness/ mitigation actions and opportunities are discussed and agreed during a PSP workshop. Such weather scenarios and advisories are communicated widely to communities, the public and any agencies that need to be engaged in supporting preparedness action.

The process of developing scenarios and advisories brings together different sources. It also facilitates agreement between often opposing ways of generating weather and climate information. This builds trust in the process and the outputs for others to act on the advisories.

As a result of this, those involved in the process can become strong champions for ensuring the information is communicated, with the trust that it will be acted upon.

The following season, during the July-October 2015 Karma rains, forecasts in parts of Afar, Somali and central and northeastern Ethiopia were pessimistic.

In all PRIME woredas in Afar, where PSP events were organised, both traditional and meteorological agency forecasts at the local level predicted below normal rains with pessimistic views on pasture, water, market and livestock conditions. Some of the mitigation and
preparedness actions recommended in the advisories were:

• Timely and planned sale of livestock
before the advent of the dry season.
• Diversifying animals towards more
resilient species (some species of
cattle require high amounts of feed
and water).
• Cultivating short maturing feed and
food crops that can tolerate heat stress
and diseases.
• Water harvesting and management,
including design of water reservoirs
to reduce sun exposure.
• Planned/regular vaccination of livestock
(rather than eme rgency vaccination).
• Savings (money, fodder and water in
various forms).

Due to the trust and collective process of the PSP, there was a stronger culture of preparedness at household and community levels amongst PRIME pastoral communities throughout El Niño.

There was also a reduced loss of animals, with households able to gain better prices from their sale (selling when the animals were in good condition and when the price was higher, rather than during a drought when large numbers would be trying to sell their livestock too).

Lessons from the PSP process during El Niño

Religion presented a major challenge in the PSP process in Awash Fentale. Afar pastoralists are predominantly Muslim. Religious leaders used to be resistant to the concept of forecasting in and of itself, because they believed that only God can know the future. This necessitated efforts to involve them in the seasonal forecasting process, so they could come to a common understanding of its role.

The scale of the meteorological agency forecasts was very large in relation to the area of concern for the Afar communities involved, emphasizing the importance of integrating traditional and scientific forecasts.

This also underlines the usefulness of valuing and documenting community experiences while observing trends and events in localities. Meteorology experts are not generally accustomed to working at the community level and it was difficult, during the PSP process in Afar, for them
to present concepts such as probability in accessible ways, particularly to participants with lower literacy levels.

This made the dialogue on the forecasts critically important, as it served as a way of placing the broader scenarios in the local context and building a deeper understanding on both sides.

Access to information is only an initialvstep. In the initial PSP processes in Afar, participants identified many actions that would require external support and/ or inputs in order to be acted upon.

This presented a barrier to action in response to the advisories. It is generally understood that, while local government institutions are active participants in the PSP process, they face resource and capacity limitations in supporting community action. To better understand these barriers, PRIME organised a meeting bringing community members together with local government and other institutions to discuss how to better support action in line with the advisories.

At the same time, however, it was noted by one of the facilitators that the most recent PSP process yielded significantly more activities where community members themselves held the main responsibility, rather than government or other sources of support. This was a sign of increasing agency, which is critical for climate change adaptation and building adaptive capacity.

People need to see the benefits of the advised actions in relation to climate risks to be motivated to act and the most recent PSP process was a good example of this.

This case study demonstrates how preparedness actions at the household level, triggered by a forecast resulted in reduced losses during the drought. The CARE-led PSP process is one of many initiatives in Ethiopia working to pre-emptively act, based on a forecast The Livelihoods, Early Assessment and Protection (LEAP) programme is another example that uses observations of rainfall to estimate whether drought conditions are starting to occur and if there is a risk of food insecurity (Drechsler et al., 2016).

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society along with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre is piloting Forecast-based Financing (FbF), in which funding and pre-defined early actions are triggered on the basis of a forecast (Coughlan de Perez et. al., 2015).

Under FbF, forecasts are verified and their skill analysed for how well they predict observed conditions in the areas of interest. If the forecast is found to be sufficiently skillful (defined by the user’s risk appetite), it is used to set ‘danger levels’, above which it is deemed worthwhile to take action.

Funding is set aside in advance of the rainy season, along with a standard operating procedure document that is agreed upon by all actors. This guides the actions that will be automatically triggered on the basis of the danger level.

One mechanism in place in Ethiopia to reduce the risk of weather-related shocks in 2015–16 was index-based insurance. This mechanism allows farmers to invest in measures that can mitigate the impact of the drought on their assets. The following case study explains how the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative worked during the drought to reduce impacts on farmers in Tigray.

Click here to view the full report on lessons from the 2015-2016 drought in Ethiopia.