Building drought resilience in Ethiopia

The document examines the failure of traditional humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, which often undermined local resilience by displacing local businesses and decimating farmer herds. It highlights a 2016 experiment by Mercy Corps that used subsidies for traders to maintain livestock prices and vouchers to support local veterinary and forage businesses, allowing pastoralists to preserve their core breeding stock and strengthen local economies during the 2016/7 drought.

• Climate change has intensified water shortages in Ethiopia, leading to a situation where drought years now outnumber rainy years in every decade.
• Traditional aid responses, such as 'slaughter destocking' and the free distribution of forage and medicine, may undermine long-term resilience by putting local suppliers out of business and leaving farmers without the herds necessary to restart their lives.
• The Accelerated Livestock Off Take (ALOT) program in 2016 used a subsidy of 210 Ethiopian Birr (£8.00) per sheep or goat to offset fattening costs for traders, which stabilized interior market prices and allowed farmers to sell livestock before forage ran out.
• During the 2016/7 drought, the ALOT intervention destocked 3,000 cattle and 30,000 sheep and goats across the Afar, Somali, and Borena regions at 10% of the cost of traditional slaughter destocking.
• A voucher system combined with grants for approximately 50 small businesses strengthened local veterinary and forage supply chains, ensuring farmers had access to professional advice and products without wiping out local traders.

APA

Worsley, S. (2017). Building drought resilience in Ethiopia. Green Economy Coalition. https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/news-and-resources/building-drought-resilience-in-ethiopia

Chicago

Worsley, Stuart. Building drought resilience in Ethiopia. Green Economy Coalition, 2017. https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/news-and-resources/building-drought-resilience-in-ethiopia.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Worsley |first1=Stuart |title=Building drought resilience in Ethiopia |publisher=Green Economy Coalition |date=4 October 2017 |url=https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/news-and-resources/building-drought-resilience-in-ethiopia |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worsley2017building, author = {Worsley, Stuart}, title = {{Building drought resilience in Ethiopia}}, institution = {Green Economy Coalition}, year = {2017}, month = oct, url = {https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/news-and-resources/building-drought-resilience-in-ethiopia}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }