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Ethiopia is plagued by significant rainfall deficit, particularly in pastoral areas of Eastern Ethiopia. Previous La-Niña events impacted negatively on the lives and livelihoods of communities in southern Ethiopia as drought conditions resulted in poor pasture regeneration. This has led to reduced livestock production and body condition and falling livestock prices. Water scarcities and increased internal livestock movement has multiple livelihood and food security implications in communities. These events have been linked with increasing disease prevalence and malnutrition rates, particularly amongst vulnerable populations, especially children, pregnant and lactating women and the elderly.

According to Save the Children, Early Drought Alert, 2011, food security for the majority of regions in Ethiopia, will continue to decline. We have reached a critical period for intervention for preparedness and early response to prevent

serious food insecurity and livelihood crisis. Previous responses to droughts in the country failed to mitigate impacts, preserve livelihoods assets and protect vulnerable population from food insecurity and its associated health and nutrition emergencies. The government has said that they will move from a reactive approach to drought to a proactive approach.

Save the Children saw the dire need to intervene to ensure the protection of vulnerable populations. By protecting animal health and improving rangeland pastures and water supplies this would in turn protect the population. As droughts worsen, pastoralists move from place to place, trekking their animals hundreds of miles in search of adequate water and grazing land. Conflicts emerge as pressure to access resources increases. Water and food security can force schools to close and some households to withdraw children from school in order to assist in the household livelihood related work.

EthiopiaDRR IN

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Save the Children’s Presence in EthiopiaSave the Children has been present in Ethiopia since 1965. Save the

Children supports a range of innovative work throughout the

country. Save the Children is working with governments,

communities, NGOs and UN partners across the country – in the

collection and dissemination of early warning and assessment data

and assisting in the preparation of drought preparedness and

contingency plans at National and community levels. Additionally,

we focus on social protection, health, livelihoods and climate

change research.

Livelihoods and Information SystemsOur work has included Household Economy Analysis and its use in

livelihood zone mapping, the national season assessments, federal

and regional level capacity building on early warning systems,

community based early warning systems, district level contingency

planning, ad-hoc assessments, production bulletins, policy

engagement, and research on climate change adaptation.

Save the Children created effective early warning systems

through the ‘Drought Preparedness Program for Pastoral

Communities in Ethiopia ‘(Pillar I & II)’. We have improved the

livelihoods and resilience of populations in arid lands and consolidated local capacity to cope with drought. We have improved the capacity of communities to monitor and analyse food and livelihood security information and to advocate for timely and appropriate responses.

Save the Children has supported work to strength customary land and water management practices; scaled-up privatised veterinary and livestock marketing services; and drought preparedness and response, in particular through livestock-based interventions (animal health, supplementary feeding and accelerated livestock off take/commercial destocking); and to produce nutritional information that informs humanitarian and development interventions.

Furthermore, Save the Children aimed to increase food security through rangeland management and restoration. The Pastoralist Livelihood Initiative (PLI) provided training in the application of fire

to increase forage production of Ethiopian rangelands which has

many other benefits to livestock production.To meet the immediate needs of chronically food insecure

communities/households we introduced the ‘Productive safety net

project’ in North East Amhara program (MYAP). With conditional

food transfers we aimed to build the assets, capabilities and resiliency of communities/households to reduce their vulnerability to chronic food insecurity. Furthermore, we aimed to build the

capacity of Government and community to effectively implement,

monitor and evaluate a Productive Safety Program with pastoralist communities, to test and analyse the risks and benefits of different targeting approaches, the appropriateness of public works and

appropriate methods of making predictable food distributions in

pastoralist communities, and to test how to effectively incorporate Risk Management approaches into the program.

Above: Banto in front of vast pastures that should have been green and fertile, with lakes and trees in Liben, Ethiopia.

Cover: A group of farmers try to salvage corn from failed crops on the road between Konso and Arba Minch, Southern Ethiopia.

Income Generation and Wealth CreationSave the Children has promoted the diversification of livelihoods to increase household resilience and encouraged participation in more profitable markets – those that have high impacts on both agricultural and non-agricultural markets for private sector investment. This mainly addressed the issue of pastoral drop outs in both Afar and Somali and women groups.

Health and DRR‘Milk matters’ project was implemented to improve the nutritional status of pastoral children through improved access to an adequate supply of human and animal milk through identification interventions that lead to an enhanced supply of animal and breast milk for children in pastoral communities across seasons.

Natural Resource ManagementSave the Children has initiated participatory natural resources mapping and communities action plan including, clearing of invasive species, clearing and reclaiming of derelict grazing areas, water resources improvement, area enclosures, fodder production, and soil erosion control.

Advocacy and ChangeThrough the REGLAP-2 project Save the Children (with Oxfam GB) promotes appropriate policy and practice change amongst key government, donor, NGO and institutional bodies by improving the utilisation of knowledge, sharing lessons learnt and promoting good practices on issues of drought risk reduction.