From livestock herding to cooperative farming in the Somali communities of Dolo Ado and Bokolmayo districts of Ethiopia

This study was conducted in the traditional pastoralist communities of Dolo Ado and Bokolmayo districts in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. These are refugee-hosting communities where the World Food Programme (WFP) is providing humanitarian and livelihood support. This research was designed in partnership with WFP with the expectation that its findings may provide lessons that can inform the organization’s program activities benefiting refugee-hosting communities and integrated refugees. Our study examines livelihood and collective action practices in these communities in the context of climate and waterrelated stresses. It seeks to highlight factors and practices that can enhance drought-resilient livelihoods. This aspect of the study required an understanding of traditional, but changing, livelihood strategies and related institutional and sociocultural practices. In this report, we discuss a range of interrelated topics and their implications for livelihood sustainability and linked interventions—which we highlight in the section Conclusions and Suggestions. We envisage that these findings will be useful for WFP’s program agenda of integrating its emergency-humanitarian response with livelihood resilience building through long-term structural and multidimensional food security approaches. Analysis of the historical and social context of farming and collective practices in these communities revealed that crop production and pastoralism have long co-existed as means of livelihood. While cooperative farming has recently expanded in the two study areas, their past experience of collective labor practices did provide the social and cultural foundation for current cooperative action. Local users appreciate irrigation farming conducted through cooperatives for its valuable contribution to food and income security. However, irrigation farming in the study areas operates in terms of cooperatives rather than on the basis of irrigation water users’ associations (IWUAs), which possibly affects the prospect of legal recognition and sustained practice. Understanding such issues is important for improving the practices of current WFP-supported irrigation cooperatives for the benefit of both refugee-hosting communities and hosted refugees. The livelihoods of people in the study areas have historically and traditionally been associated with pastoralism, characterized by livestock herding and mobility. However, there has been a shift from pastoralism toward sedentary farming. This change is being shaped by climatic and political economy factors and processes, thereby giving it the character of an adaptive livelihood strategy. The shift of livelihoods toward farming and crop production involves gender dynamics. It opens new areas of responsibility for women and increases their workload while having implications for gender disparities in economic gain and financial decision-making power. Therefore, it is imperative that cooperative farming and other intervention programs being implemented in refugee-hosting communities ensure gender-inclusive financial gains. Recurrent and successive droughts in the study areas have made rangelands unsuitable for livestock grazing, thereby discouraging the pastoral production system. As a result, the social organization and traditional resource management practices associated with herd mobility and grazing land- and water-use patterns have decreased in importance. However, the clan-based kinship system that traditionally guided social organization still governs societal relations and plays a role in solving challenges relating to access to land, conflict resolution, and principles of social support. In particular, the importance of local customary conflict resolution mechanisms continues despite the erosion of rangeland management practices. This suggests that humanitarian and development interventions taking place in refugee-hosting communities should make use of local practices and systems of dispute settlement because they facilitate inter- and intracommunity relations.