How the climate crisis is changing an ancient way of life in Ethiopia

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on The Independent or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: In Ethiopia’s Afar region, climate change is forcing pastoralist communities to fundamentally rethink how they survive, as recurring droughts and floods make traditional livestock-based livelihoods increasingly untenable

🔭 The context: A way of life under pressure
• Afar, one of the most arid regions in the world and the cradle of early human history, is experiencing intensifying climate extremes
• Droughts that once occurred every decade are now happening almost annually, while delayed but intense rains trigger destructive floods
• Pastoralist communities, long adapted to mobility, are losing livestock — their primary source of wealth and food security
• According to World Food Programme, both rainy seasons in 2025 arrived late and fell too heavily, worsening land degradation

🌍 Why it matters for people and the planet: Adaptation is uneven and fragile
• Many families are shifting from pastoralism to agro-pastoralism, combining crop farming with smaller herds to spread climate risk
• Farming offers some stability but introduces new vulnerabilities in arid landscapes, including irrigation failures during drought
• Women and children are particularly exposed as food insecurity, malnutrition, and livelihood instability increase
• Land reallocation to national parks and commercial agriculture has reduced access to traditional grazing areas, compounding climate stress

⏭️ What’s next: Resilience depends on support — and that support is shrinking
• Aid agencies are helping communities adapt through climate-resilient seeds, restored irrigation, and livelihood diversification
• Funding cuts, including those led by the US, are forcing major scale-backs in humanitarian and resilience programmes
• Experts warn that without sustained investment, both pastoral and farming livelihoods could collapse under accelerating climate shocks
• Families increasingly see education as the only long-term escape from climate-dependent survival

💬 One quote: “The drought comes much more often, and we kept losing our livestock,” said Amina, a farmer in Afar who shifted from pastoralism to farming to cope with climate change

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