Surviving drought with better data: Ethiopian pastoralists use a digital monitoring system to avoid crisis
Can better data help pastoralists stay ahead of drought? In Ethiopia’s rangelands, a digital monitoring system is helping communities, researchers, and local authorities track water and pasture conditions before crisis strikes.
- Climate Action
- Digital innovation
- Ethiopia
Surviving drought with better data: Ethiopian pastoralists use a digital monitoring system to avoid crisis
Can better data help pastoralists stay ahead of drought? In Ethiopia’s rangelands, a digital monitoring system is helping communities, researchers, and local authorities track water and pasture conditions before crisis strikes.
Across Ethiopia’s pastoral landscapes, livestock production hinges on two fragile resources: water and pasture. When either of these gets scarce, pastoralists face cascading risks that threaten both livelihoods and regional food security. With climate variability intensifying in recent decades, drought return time become more frequent and severe, depleting water points, reducing pasture, and impacting livestock productivity. In these circumstances, timely, reliable information can bring proactive risk management into practice before it pose crises.
Recognizing this urgent need, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT worked with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) to co-develop and operationalize the National Rangeland Monitoring System. This digital platform, which is integrated into Ethiopia’s national infrastructure, strengthens climate risk management in pastoral areas by combining field observations (such as the daily hydrological observation record) with climate forecasts and satellite data for early preparedness.