Demographic Characteristics of the Respondent
Table 3.1
Demographic statistics of the respondents in Abudwak District (n=135)
| Variables | Percentage |
| Relationship with head of household | | |
| Head | | 60% |
| Spouse | | 36.2% |
| Mother | | 1.48% |
| Father | | 2.2% |
| Sex | | |
| Male | | 37.3% |
| Female | | 62.7% |
| Age | | |
| 20-34 | | 5.1% |
| 35-44 | | 11.8% |
| 45-54 | | 53.7% |
| Above 55 | | 19.2% |
| Marital Status | | |
| Married | | 79.2% |
| Widow | | 14.8% |
| Divorce | | 5.9% |
| Level of Education | | |
| None | | 88.8% |
| Primary | | 11.2% |
Results from table 4.1 indicate that majority 60% of the respondents were heads of the household while 36.2% where spouses. This has significant implications on household livelihood activities. Given that it’s the responsibility of the male to provide for their families. It also indicates that it’s the male that dominantly manage households.
In most of their households, 38% were male while 62% were respondents female. The large numbers of female as heads of the households could be explained by the fact that the women are strong than the males, women’s are fallows goats and selling milk around the village where mostly male of the household heads are absent from the city.
The results also indicate that most 63.7% of the respondents were aged between 45-54 years, while 19.2% of the respondents were aged above 55 years and only 11.8% of the respondents aged between 34-44 years. This indicates that most of household headed were mature and productive status of their household livelihood activities. Majority of the respondents are mature have ability to produce livelihood assets and had the responsibility to feeding their family. Table 4.1 also shows the distribution of respondents by marital status. It shows that most 79.2% of the respondents were married while 14.8 were widow and only 5.9% were divorced.
When asked about their sources of income/occupation, 76% reported to be pastoralist while 24% derived their income from casual labor. With regard to education, the result revealed that majority 88.8% of the respondents had no formal education, while 11.2 had primary and formal education. This shows that most households around villages from Abudwak district are headed by people without education. This finding concurs with Caleb (2006) who found that 77% of total populations in Turkana Central district of Kenya were illiterate. This low level of literacy has significant negative implication in coping with climate change in their locality. Further, Table 3.1. clear shows the level of education of the respondents. It shows that majority 88.8% of the respondents had no formal education, while 11.2% had primary and formal education level of education respectively. This shows that most households around villages Abudwak district are headed by people without any formal education. Lack of education can decrease their skills and approaches to earn household livelihood activities.
3.2. Income sources/Livelihood
In order to understand the effects of climate variability among pastoralist communities in Abudwak District, it was important to first understand the sources of income or livelihood activities as this has a bearing on how they perceived climate variability impact or effect
(Table 4.4).
| Income source/livelihood | Percentage (%) |
| livestock productivity | | 62.6 |
| Casual Labor | | 20 |
| Remittance | | 17.4 |
Majority (62.6%) of the respondents were depending on sales of livestock production as a source of their income while the remaining 20% were running casual labor as a source of their income. Further, 17.4% of the respondents demonstrate to get external income from their nearest family living outside the country or their politicians who live in the capital city of the Mogadishu. Main sources of income of pastoral community’s around Abudwak district are livestock raring. Other communities separated livestock in one area due to climate variability and preferred may be livestock raring as a kind of sources of their income and strategies for sustain their livelihood activities. Pastoralist in Abudwak district also have temporary source of income for casual labor like building houses or other activities for daily based work in the town of the city. Another hand worked for INGO’s or LNGO’s ongoing projects like cash for work, food for work, conditional cash transfer or unconditional cash transfer to feeding their lives and their families. This study is connected with Silvestri, et al. (2012) his findings showed livestock systems play an important role in the livelihoods of many rural communities in Africa.
| FGD- In normal times, the main source of income is livestock products and sale of livestock. Some of the locals depend on remittance from abroad and on commercial business. However, as the food security deteriorated, thousands depending on livestock resources are drastically affected. The middle and poor income groups in Abudwak are suffering from asset depletion – selling off major immovable assets like land. Food aid is rarely delivered due to insecurity in the area. Pastoralists groups seem to depend on hand outs from better off relatives. This is followed by borrowing food on credit. |
3.3. Perceptions of climate variability around Abudwak district
The study findings reveal that there is climate variability in Abudwak district and that local communities are aware of climate variation and impacts. The communities stated that climate has changed and as a result droughts have become more frequent and prolonged Figure 4.1.
The results also indicate that 38% the community perceived the rains to the reduced.
According to the local communities the long rains used to occur in the month of April but for the last 20 years they occur little and only in the month of June, although sometimes they might come late or fail to come altogether. The rainfall is erratic, and when it comes most of it and then disappear over a few days or hours causing long time of dry season. Despite, seasonal changes also happened for the last decades in Abudwak district. The facts that demonstrated changes in seasonal was change period of days increased hot days, long period of winter and summer and short period of spring and autumn. Seasonal changes created long period of days and short time of period of days. Weather and climate variability defined four seasonal changes in nature but climate change for human activities caused to period and duration of days and nights.
Focus group discussants agreed that there has been a change in climate patterns. According to them, this observation was supported by a one of the participants in his fifties who was born and brought up in Shiilmadoow village. He described the change in climatic pattern using the following statement:
| I am a pastoralist in Shiilmadoow village. I was badly affected by the drought in the area. I owned 28 camels, 16 cows and 135 goats. I also had a berked as a water source. The berked is dry and i moved away from it. There was some pasture there but i could not truck water there because it is expensive. Here i moved close to the borehole. But what is sense ... nothing because there is no pasture, only water you get with difficulty. You see how my hut looks. I fed them with the animals. Not all animals but the ones i love. I didn’t want to lose them. They are of a good breed. What else can i do? Some of them have already died. This is a natural disaster. I lost 13 cows, 31 goats and 2 camels. They have died. The rains are not near. I fear I may lose more. The camels are getting weaker each day. So are the remaining shoats. It is bad luck. I am slowly becoming poor, very poor. I cannot continue keeping my children..... What else will i do if lose my animals. No problem Allah will help us, the result is consistent with Tallaksen et al. (2009) findings which indicates that droughts are perceived as a natural occurring. |
This result is in line with Devereux (2006) finding which shows that droughts were part of normal life cycle in arid and semi-arid areas, where rainfall is low. “Severe and prolonged drought has affected the water levels of water reservoir and bore holes arround Abudwak district”. They were thus in agreement with the following statement from one of them who stated that: “When we were growing up, bore holes is available whole the year and we were not worried any dry season and lack of water single season, because have a lot of water. During heavy rains they used to overflow all over the water body and increased infiltration of water in the water table. Today even if there is heavy rain washed away soil fertility and reduced amount of water infiltration and do not overflow as they used to do in the past. The water levels of our underground level decreased and have gone down by 60%”. This result is in line with, Webb and Braun (1994) who found that the eastern lowlands of Ethiopia are vulnerable to drought and there have been notable droughts in this part of the country throughout human history as a result result of Increase in temperature and rainfall variability, associated with global climate change, are likely to further increase the drought risks.
| Year | Description of drought |
| 2000 | | there was a severe drought while affected livestock production |
| 2002 | | there was a drought causing of water reservoir but forage and pasture for livestock is available |
| 2005 | | there was a severe drought causing of water and also pasture |
| 2008 | | there was a severe drought and people ate yellow maize |
| 2011 | there was a drought that caused death for people and livestock and crop production at all |
| 2013 | | there was a drought and so many livestock died |
| 2016-2017 | | There was a drought is called (Sima) means it affected as same for whole lands of Somali community in two years of consecutive. |
| 2021 | | There was a drought and it killed many livestock |
FGD discussants elaborated the aforementioned further by giving the trend of droughts for a period of 20 years as shown below: seasons of certain flowering plants, and the prevalence of certain insects, birds and diseases.
3.4. Perceived Causes of Climate Variability
Respondents in the study area were asked on what they perceived as the cause of climate variability. They attributed climate variability to three factors as shown in Table 4.3 specifically, 71.1% of the respondents attributed it to human-made factors, 28.9% to natural factors.
Table 4.3
– Perceived cause of Climate Variability (135)
| Cause of climate variability | Percentage (%) |
| Human Made | | 71.1 |
| Urbanization | | 0.7 |
| Natural | | 28.2 |
Presents human-made activities associated with climate variability as given by the respondents. Most of the respondents stated that human made are main factors caused change of climatic when they cutting down trees for building purposes as well as clearing bushes to lay concrete on way for settlement and other economic activities had caused climate variation.
Humans have caused many changes on the planet through land use changes by clearing trees which are valuable carbon sinks, to make room for urban developments, human settlement and agricultural activities. By removing these valuable carbon sinks global warming is being hastened. The respondents indicated that climate variability was caused by industrialization although they had limited knowledge of the relationship between the two. However, large herds of livestock are very destructive to the environment as the existing resources are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time or without sufficient recovery periods. This has reduced the usefulness, productivity and biodiversity of the land and is one of the causes of desertification and erosion that leads to happened climate variation in Abudwak district.
3.5. Perceived effects of climate variability in Abudwak District
Climate variation in Abudwak district effected pastoral main livelihood activities. Pastoralists tend to sale their livestock numbers during droughts out of anxiety and to provide food for their families. Unfortunately, during droughts livestock become wasted and do not attract competitive bids because buyers do not wish to take risks. However, different challenges and problems created climate variability into livelihood activities for communities such as food insecurity, disease spread and human health problems this entire dangerous situation was the result of climate variability and change of climatic. Loss most of their livelihood activities and rely for survival such as subsistence farming for daily based livelihood activities depend on due to frequent drought and uncertain weather caused loss of agricultural production. Furthermore, livestock production decreased loss of available forage and pasture when it became dry season whole the year or more than one year recurrent drought with no raining led to body condition and value of livestock decreased their price and also production. Effect of climate variability on livelihood activities among pastoral communities to created new face of live like poverty, IDP’s and internal conflict among them when it the resources scarcity such water shortage, food insecurity and limited sources of income or livelihood activities caused conflict and unrest.
Table 4.5
shows Perceived Effect of climate Variability (n=135)
| Variables | Percentage |
| Livestock disease | | 21.5 |
| Livestock death | | 34.8 |
| livestock disease and death | | 43.7 |
Majority (43.7%) of the respondents were agree failure of livestock production due to climate variability and livestock death with prolonged drought caused shortage of water and lack of pasture and forage to feeding. While the remaining (34.8%) of the respondents believed more dangerous for livestock effected for drought and other effect caused climate variability. Further, 21.5% of the respondents demonstrate livestock disease for is a front line for climate variability effect.
Focus group discussants in their opinion about effect of climate variability on livelihood activities and state this statement:
“Droughts had caused fluctuations in the livestock population through increased mortality and reduced birth rates due to decreased forage and lack water availability effected rainfall agricultural dependent and all Abudwak pastoralists are depending on rainfall for rearing animals”.
| One of the pastoralism from Ari cadeys “I learnt livestock keeping from my parents and I have been doing it since I was a child. In those days, there was grass all over. But over the years, everything has changed. There is no more grass for our livestock. The little rain that falls in this area has become less frequent and sometimes it does not rain at all. Even when we move to new pastures, grass is increasingly hard to find. This change of the weather has an effect on our livelihoods activities. Twenty years ago, we had more than 500 goat and sheep; today, there are just 40 left. I am very worried about this because for us goats are very important. Other hand I was discontinued to cultivate crop and cereals due to frequent drought and uncertain climatic pattern”. |