| Abstract: | Pastoralist communities in the south and east parts of Ethiopia have been experiencing recurrent disasters that weakened the local adaptive mechanisms and made them less resilient and vulnerable. Particularly, the trend and frequency of drought is increasing without giving time to recovery. It rigorously deteriorated the resilience capacity of households and local institutions. Much has been done in the last couple of decades in the way of managing disaster risks. Nevertheless, despite substantial efforts of all concerned actors, the frequency and scale of adverse events and shocks have been increasing. This study was, therefore, initiated in the objective of identifying key building blocks of community resilience, evaluating the status of the community with respect to identified resilience dimensions, assessing the characteristics and strategies of disaster resilient households and also to examine the most highly rated interventions of the government and/or NGOs in building local disaster resilience. In the study, participatory qualitative approaches, namely focus group discussions and key informant interviews were employed. Moreover, secondary sources were reviewed to cross check and triangulate the data. The analysis of the findings indicated that drought and conflict are still the prevalent hazards of pastoralists that significantly contributed to livelihood losses and limited the development and prosperity of the locality. The top five statements that distinguishes the resilience characteristics of the community include: peace and security, human health care, food security, water for human and livestock consumption and education. The major characteristics of households that are relatively resilient could be summarized into having sustainable income obtained from small businesses that are less dependent on the weather and assets like livestock and shelter. Access to finance, off-farm income and education were found to be the primary driving factors to reaching a resilient status. It was the mixture of these characteristics that seemed to be key to allow households to spread risk across income sources. The community indicated that small business, credit/saving, supply of food/relief, education, women empowerment, and water development as the main interventions that made significant contribution in enhancing resilience of households. Therefore, the long and short term disaster reduction strategies should focus on these areas first to build resilience of pastoralists. |
