‘We walk farther each day’: The human cost of pastoralist drought and resource strain

‘We walk farther each day’: The human cost of pastoralist drought and resource strain

If drought was forecast, why did the crisis still unfold? Tracking 2025-2026 conditions across pastoral borderlands, digital early warning systems reveal how climate shocks outpaced response.

For pastoralists in southern Ethiopia, the difference between resilience and crisis can be measured in centimetres of water and fractions of a ton of grass. A single year has turned familiar grazing lands into a patchwork of dust and desperation, where every remaining waterhole tells a story of loss. Between January 2025 and January 2026, both water and pasture slipped away with unsettling speed.

Across Ethiopia’s lowlands, particularly in the Borana zone and parts of the Somali region, drought tightened its grip not through spectacle, but through accumulation. A below-normal Meher rainy season failed to recharge surface water. Pastures that typically recover after seasonal rains did not. By the start of 2026, the land had crossed threshold pastoralists know well: when wells dry faster than expected and grass no longer returns, mobility becomes desperation rather than strategy.

This drought has also been shaped by broader climate drivers. Seasonal rainfall variability linked to La Niña conditions and shifts in the Indian Ocean Dipole has reinforced below-normal rainfall patterns across southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, deepening drought risk in already climate-fragile pastoral systems.

What distinguishes this drought from many before it is how clearly its progression can now be traced.

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