The risk of climatic disasters such as drought and floods is a central fact in the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and will become more important as the impacts of climate change are felt.  However, vulnerability to these disasters is felt differently by poorer households than by those who are better-off, and is shaped by the broader context of policies, institutions, and economic or environmental trends.  For example, the resilience of pastoralists and dryland farmers to drought has been eroded in recent decades by insecurity of land tenure, increasing levels of conflict, misplaced policies supporting unsustainable crop production, and failure to support more sustainable systems.

In such a context, there is a need for multiple forms of external assistance.  These should include long-term policies to reduce vulnerability, but also require well-planned and well-targeted relief and mitigation measures.  NRI has applied these insights in a range of recent research and consultancy projects.  We have: investigated impacts of drought on pastoralists in southern Ethiopia for Save the Children (USA); assisted World Vision in re-orienting its assistance to pastoralists throughout the Horn of Africa; authored a ‘Policy Options Paper on Drought Management in the Livestock Sector’ for the World Bank; and contributed to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  We recently became partners in a major new research project on ‘Strengthening Local Agricultural Innovation Systems in Tanzania and Malawi to Adapt to Climate Change and Variability’.

(More information on NRI’s work on climate change.)