Enhancing Economic Opportunities for Resilient Pastoral Livelihoods

Course title: Enhancing Economic Opportunities for Resilient Pastoral Livelihoods

INTRODUCTION
Pastoral livestock production is practiced in an estimated area of 43% percent of Africa land mass in different regions of Africa by an estimate of 268 million pastoralists. Pastoralism plays an important role in the national and regional economies of Africa in terms of export of animals to both domestic and international markets. Furthermore, pastoralism contributes a percentage of 10 to 44 of the gross domestic product (GDP) of African countries. Despite the significant impact of pastoralism to livelihoods, economy of Africa’s dry lands, GDP and exports sector, pastoralists are faced with various challenges including climate change and climate variability, increasing risk of animal and zoonotic diseases, insecure land rights and natural resource management, violence, displacement and militarization of pastoral livelihood systems and neglect and exclusion of pastoralist communities among other challenges. One of the key interventions to ensure sustainable livelihoods of pastoralist is focus on building resilience to mitigate effects of climate change. Resilience is being understood in terms of building different types of capacity within communities and social-ecological systems. Building resilience of vulnerable communities to the vagaries of climate change calls for more transformative approaches that can organically evolve to suit the dynamic and unique needs of different farming systems. This 5- days course aim to equip participants with knowledge of empowering pastoralist in building resilience to mitigate effects of climate change.
Duration
5 days
Who should attend?
• Field technicians and agricultural extension staff
• Governmental and nongovernmental organizations implementing adaptation projects
• Agricultural extension officers
• Representatives of NGOs
• Private organizations
Course objectives
By the end of the training participants will be able to:
• Learn how to increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises
• Understand Livelihood approaches in fragile contexts
• Learn the links between resilience and livelihoods
• Understand resilience pathways and outcomes
• To identify and analyses the key premises underpinning dry land policies, generate arguments and alternative policy options

Course content
Module 1: Understanding context of pastoralism
• The dynamics of pastoral systems
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relevant to pastoralism
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 2015–2030
• N The Paris Climate Agreement.
• Institutions in the country mandated with building resilience of pastoralists and their interventions
• Mitigation strategies and financing mechanisms for pastoralists (e.g. livestock take off, livestock insurance etc.)
• Four key elements of transformative change in resilience building

Module 2: The policy challenges and options for pastoralism
• Past policy and current reforms and their drivers e.g. wildlife, water and range management.
• The national poverty reduction strategies,
• Constraints and opportunities brought by the policy to pastoralists
• identify and analyses the key premises underpinning dry land policies, generate arguments and alternative policy options
Module 3: Resilience dimension measurement
• Wealth index
• Household food insecurity access prevalence (HFIAP)
• Community network/Social capital
• Psychosocial distress
• Livestock
• Infrastructure and social services
• Human capital
• Environment
Livelihood approaches in fragile contexts
• How to increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises
• The links between resilience and livelihoods
Module 4: Advocating for change
• Identifying key actors, their roles, the policymaking cycle and crucial issues when advocating for change.
• Actors and stakeholders, and their roles in resilience-building
• Resilience pathways and outcomes (community and livelihood resilience).
• Enabling environments’: internal and external factors enabling or obstructing progress.
• Beneficiaries, equity and inclusion.
• Synergies between adaptation, mitigation, food security and development
• Planning for community-based adaptation to climate change in agriculture
• Building resilience.
• Supplying humanitarian assistance.
• Improving livelihoods and increasing local and national stakeholders’ learning, capacity and knowledge around resilience
• The theory of change

Module 5: Determinants of successful adaptation by pastoralists
• Knowledge on impacts and vulnerabilities
• Knowledge on natural resources and socioeconomics and Adaptation options
• Sustained policy support

Community-based adaptation: Underlying principles
• Essential steps of community based adaptation
• Assessment of current vulnerability, risks and local livelihoods of population
• Source of information of climate change (indigenous knowledge and conventional knowledge)