Research accelerator project enhancing multi-hazard resilience in Ethiopia

The project is designed to inform, influence, and transform the actions and behaviours of several key stakeholders, with a primary focus on pastoralist communities in the Borana Zone, local government entities, and humanitarian organisations involved in food (in)security and disaster response.

At the centre of this initiative are the pastoralist communities themselves, whose local knowledge, traditional practices, and lived experiences are critical to informing and shaping the direction of the project. By interviewing community members and other key stakeholders, we aim to harness perspectives on their shifting climate realities and the specific challenges and barriers they face in using early warning systems and implementing anticipatory action.

These insights will inform the subsequent design and facilitation of action research workshops that have the aim of furthering our collective understanding of early warning systems and the importance of proactive and holistic adaptation strategies. This collaborative approach ensures that the solutions this project ends up proposing are grounded in the realities of their daily lives, and prioritise their perspectives and priorities in the development of these local systems.

By empowering community members with co-created knowledge about their vulnerabilities and available resources, we aim to foster a shift in attitudes towards risk management. Ultimately, we anticipate a transformation in how these communities perceive and respond to risks, cultivating a stronger culture of preparedness and resilience that is informed by their own experiences.

The project also seeks to engage the wider early warning and anticipatory action community at local, regional and national levels in Ethiopia. It aims to provide government officials with actionable recommendations grounded in community insights, and thereby influence policy-making and resource allocation to ensure that the specific needs and challenges of pastoralist communities are addressed. Meanwhile, it will also inform civil society actors – both through the ongoing Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs-funded “CLAP” project that this research directly feeds into, but also through the wider networks, forums and partners that these consortium members engage.

In summary, the project envisions a landscape where knowledge and attitudes towards food security and disaster preparedness are significantly improved among community members, local governance is more informed and responsive, and humanitarian actors implement effectively and collaboratively. By sharing findings and best practices derived from the research, we hope to inspire actors to adopt a more community-based approach to early warning systems and anticipatory action. These changes are essential for creating sustainable preparedness and enhancing the food security and resilience of pastoralist communities in the Borana Zone.

The project activities are structured into six key work packages, each contributing to the overall goal of developing context-sensitive early warning systems and anticipatory action strategies.

1. Literature review: The project will commence with a comprehensive literature review to deepen our understanding of how climate change and other crises impact pastoral livelihood strategies, vulnerabilities, and food security. This foundational work will inform the research design and ensure that the project is grounded in existing knowledge while identifying gaps that need to be addressed.
2. Community engagement and agreements: Following the literature review, we will establish agreements with targeted communities to facilitate household interviews and action research workshops. This step is crucial for building trust and ensuring that community members are actively involved in the research process from the outset.
3. Fieldwork and participatory action research: The core of the project will involve extensive fieldwork in selected communities within the Borana Region. This will include conducting household interviews to gather qualitative data on local perspectives, vulnerabilities, and coping strategies. Participatory action research workshops will be organised to engage community members in discussions about their anticipations and perceptions of risks, as well as to identify barriers to effective early warning systems. This collaborative approach will ensure that the research reflects the realities of pastoralist life and incorporates local knowledge.
4. Dissemination of findings: The project will then turn to disseminating and communicating the results of the action research. This will include reporting on the complex interplay between multiple hazards, livelihood practices, and food security, as well as barriers to anticipatory action identified during the research.
5. Co-Creation of early warning systems and anticipatory action strategies: Based on insights gathered from the literature review and community research, the project will facilitate the co-creation of context-sensitive early warning systems and anticipatory action strategies between communities and “CLAP” project partners. The data used to inform this co-creation process as well as the recommendations coming out of it will also be shared with all relevant bodies to inform policy- and decision-making.
6. Implementation: Together with community members and in accordance with the other “CLAP” project objectives, the final activity will be the sustainable implementation of the new or improved community-based early warning systems and anticipatory action strategies.

Through these work packages, the project aims to produce a range of outputs, including comprehensive research reports, co-created early warning systems and anticipatory action strategies, and both in-person and online dissemination activities to share findings and recommendations. It is hoped that the long-term output of the project will be to contribute to a more resilient and food-secure future for pastoralist communities in the Borana Zone.

The activities and outputs of this project are strategically designed in a way that supports the development of context-sensitive early warning systems that directly address the unique challenges these communities face. The step-wise approach is grounded in and begins with knowledge identification and co-production, and culminates in the co-implementation of early warning systems together with those whose knowledge has been key to its design.

UCC will lead the research design and fieldwork, facilitating workshops that gather community perspectives and validate findings. Following the dissemination and communication of results and findings, ADRA Denmark and CIFA will lead the development of enhanced and effective early warning strategies and systems with communities and other consortium members from the wider “CLAP project”, and ensure that the systems are effectively integrated and taken up.

The logic behind this approach is rooted in the understanding that sustainable change occurs when local knowledge informs decision-making. By involving stakeholders at every stage—from research to implementation—we create a feedback loop that enhances the relevance and effectiveness of the early warning systems.

The dissemination of findings to local, regional, and national stakeholders in Ethiopia will further amplify the impact and promote the wider adoption and integration of the actionable recommendations for improved resilience and food security for pastoralist communities.

Finally, while this research project has an end date, the significance and reach of its impact lies in its connection to and embedment within the existing “CLAP” project, which in turn is comprised of consortium members that will continue to work together into the future.

The project is led by Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Denmark, with the Department of Emergency and Risk Management at University College Copenhagen and Community Initiative Facilitation and Assistance, Ethiopia