Adopting participatory action research in strengthening pastoral communities to improve resilience to climate change

Abstract

Pastoralists have a diversity of strategies to sustain livestock production which is important for their livelihoods. However, recently climate change has had devastating impact on pastoral way of life resulting into high livestock mortalities. Their strategies, based on centuries of exposure to intra- and inter-annual droughts may not work well now due to extended drought and constraints related to livestock movements. Thus there is a need to introduce innovations that will increase resilience of pastoralists to cope with the vagaries of weather. In situ cattle fattening is one of the adopted strategies. However, this is a new approach compared to free grazing and may require empowerment of the communities to adopt new technologies especially during period of pasture scarcity. The research adopted Participatory Action Research (PAR) to empower livestock keepers to take advantage of the available resources. Consequently it was expected that the nutritional and health status of animals will improve and pastoralist will venture into dry season cattle fattening conditions. Preliminary evaluation shows that the project has been accepted, but full adoption will depend on whether the technology will fit into fanners' own strategies as well as resolving some challenges associated with the practice