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The objective of this chapter is to review the impacts of climate change on dryland agriculture and its possible solutions. Climate change poses significant challenges on dryland agriculture in Ethiopia. In turn, agriculture (malpractice) has contributed to climate change by emitting GHGs such as CO2, CH4 and N2O. Globally, agriculture’s contribution takes 14% of CO2, 47% of CH4 and 84% of N2O. Agriculture contributes to 80% of total Ethiopia’s GHGs emission: CH4, N2O and CO2, respectively, contributed to 72, 15 and 14% to aggregated emission. To soothe the impacts of climate change, countries should act now differently together to stabilize the fractions of GHGs in the atmosphere at a level that would also stabilize the climate system. Adopting climate-compatible agricultural development strategies can enable to reduce agricultural GHGs emissions or sequestration enhanced while maintaining and even increasing food supply. It is understood that combating desertification, land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought are the basis for accelerated sustainable development, poverty reduction and ensuring food security in Ethiopia. Climate-smart dryland agriculture can maintain livestock and crop productivity, reduces GHGs emission, lessens the impact of climate change and reduces the trade-offs among agricultural development to fulfill food security, climate change and ecosystem degradation.
Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
*Address all correspondence to: zenebemg2014@gmail.com
1. Introduction
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) stated that “the major challenge threatening the dryland communities is degradation of the natural resource base, which is leading to soil and vegetation loss, fertility decline, water stress, drying of water resources, lakes and rivers. This degradation is being exacerbated by increasing climate variability and change, with profound impacts on the livelihoods of dryland communities” [1]. Despite the fact that Ethiopia’s contribution to global GHGs is about 0.04% [2], climate change poses significant challenges for agriculture in general and dryland agriculture in particular. In return, conventional agriculture in general and malpractice agriculture in particular have contributed to climate change by emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO2, CH4 and N2O. In this case, a paradigm shift at all levels is needed in such a way that agriculture should be at the core of sustainable development and poverty-reduction efforts as well as those related to lower-carbon and climate-resilient growth [2, 3].
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [4, 5], in Ethiopia, over the past five decades, the temperature has been increasing annually at a rate of 0.2°C. This has already led to a decline in agricultural production, and cereal production is expected to decline still further (12%) under moderate global warming [6]. Furthermore, it has led to a decline in biodiversity, a shortage of food and an increases in human and livestock health problems, as well as rural-urban migration and dependency on external support. Factors exacerbating the impact of climate change in Ethiopia are rapid population growth, land degradation, widespread poverty, dependency on rain fed agriculture, lack of awareness by policy and decision-makers about climate change and lack of appropriate policies and legislation [7, 8], National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia [9]. More than 85% of the people in Ethiopia depend mainly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This will render them very vulnerable to climate variability and change. Consequently, a large number of people in Ethiopia are being affected chronically by drought and/or flooding, leading to deaths and loss of assets [10]. For instance in the period 1900–2019, there were 16 drought events that caused a total death of 402,367 people and a total affected population of 77,141,879 and resulted in total economic damage amounted to USD 1.5 billion [10]. This has obliged the country to make an appeal for international support. The problem is very serious in the arid and semi-arid areas, especially among the herders (Table 1) [12].
Dryland features
Descriptions
General characteristics
The rainfall is low in amount, erratic and uneven in distribution and generally concentrated in a few heavy storms with high intensity, making droughts a common experience
Vegetation is consequently very sparse and generally degraded, leaving large areas of soil unprotected
Soils in many drylands have low organic matter content, are highly eroded and have low fertility
The high temperatures and strong winds result in high evapotranspiration rates, which further exacerbate the limited availability of moisture
Ecologies
The ecology is fragile and the environment is unstable
Consist of a wide range of agro-ecologies including the arid, semi arid and dry sub-humid
The altitude ranges from −124 to 1500 m a.s.l. and the rainfall ranges from 200 to 700 mm annually, with a growing period of 90 to 180 days
Resource
Consists of various types of plants, crops and domestic and wild animals
one of the main centers of biodiversity of sorghum, finger millet, field peas, chickpea, cowpea, perennial cotton, safflower, castor bean, sesame and other crops
Center of livestock genetic diversity, for example the distinct breeds Borana, Jijiga cattle, the black headed Ogaden sheep, the Afar goat, the Somali goat and the camel resources
Population
About a third of the populations in Ethiopia currently live in the dryland areas
The population of dryland areas is continually increasing, because people are moving from the highly degraded highlands
Populations in the drylands are exceeding the current carrying capacity and this land is becoming degraded
Farming systems
The farming systems are mixed with highly integrated animal and crop production
Small landholding owned by households on which crops are produced and partially supports variable number of livestock
The holdings are small, marginal, unconsolidated and scattered, making it difficult for farmers to work on all their fields at the same time
Table 1.
The characteristics of drylands in Ethiopia.
Source: [1, 11] (Regional Learning and Advocacy Programme).
The livelihoods of pastoralists are highly dependent on natural resources and very sensitive to climate change, yet such events cannot be easily separated from other events such as land degradation and policy changes [12]. The study by Thomas et al. [13] showed that the agricultural development challenges related to climate change in Ethiopia’s dryland agro-ecosystems are decline in crop yields and agricultural productivity, high variation in rainfall, water scarcity, drought and erosion, decline in livestock feed and the consequent decline in livestock productivity, prevalence and outbreak of pest and disease, increase in invasive plant and animal spices, loss of biodiversity and an increase in the vulnerability of pastoralist livelihoods.
Despite all those challenges for agricultural development in the dryland agro-climatic zones in Ethiopia, agriculture has remained conventional and traditional in such environments. Those conventional and traditional agricultural developments, combined with the impacts of climate change and variability, are not sustainable, retard climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives, and exacerbate food insecurity. Therefore, the core objectives of this review were to assess the contribution of such conventional agricultural developments to GHGs emissions from global and Ethiopian perspectives; to give directions on how these unsustainable forms of agriculture could be transformed into sustainable developments by applying climate-smart technologies and proper resource management strategies.
Greenhouse gases allow the penetration of incoming solar radiation but absorb the outgoing long wave radiation from the earth’s surface and re-radiate the absorbed radiation back to the surface of the earth and by doing so they have caused global warming and climate change [4, 5].
The emission of GHGs from anthropogenic activities such as industrial processes, land use change and agriculture are the main causes of climate change. As indicated in Figure 1, agriculture’s contribution to GHGs emissions is huge. It takes 14% of CO2, 47% of CH4 and 84% of N2O to make up the global share of GHGs emissions [2, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19]. These gases are the most persuasive GHGs that are emitted from unsustainable agricultural practices [20, 21, 22]. In Ethiopia, agriculture contributed 80% of total country’s GHGs emission. Of this, CH4, N2O and CO2 contributed 72%, 15% and 14% to aggregated emission respectively [23]. Agriculture includes cropland management; grazing land management/pasture improvement; management from agricultural organic soils; restoration of degraded lands; livestock management; manure/bio-solid management; and bioenergy production [2, 4, 19]. These practices can result in GHGs emissions such as CH4 from enteric fermentation and rice production, N2O emissions from soils, N2O and CH4 from manure management and biomass burning, and CO2 emissions and removals in agricultural soils. This in turn impacts agricultural developments by contributing to climate change.
Figure 1.
Percentage global contribution of GHGs to climate change (Source: [14, 15]).
To soothe the impacts of climate change, countries should act now, act together and act differently to stabilize the fractions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would also stabilize the climate system. This will give sufficient time to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner [24]. As was dealt in Kyoto Protocol, in order to promote sustainable agricultural development, countries should promote sustainable forms of agriculture in light of climate change [25]. Based on the results of the International Food Policy Research Institute [26], climate change was supposed to have reduced net crop revenue by −28% to −79% in Central Africa, by −7% to −32% in West Africa, by −12% to −17% in Southern Africa, by −11% to −12% in East Africa and by −4% to −7% in North Africa. In Ethiopia, the study by Deressa [26] showed that a unit increase in temperature during summer and winter would reduce net revenue by $177.62 ha−1 and $464.71 ha−1, respectively. On the other hand, the marginal impact of increasing precipitation during spring would increase net revenue by $225.09 ha−1. How can agricultural GHGs emissions (Table 2) be reduced or sequestration enhanced while maintaining and even increasing food supply, particularly in dryland agriculture? As shown in Figure 2, this can be answered by adopting climate-compatible agricultural development strategies [29, 30].
Sub-sector in Agriculture
Main drivers
Emission in million tonnes of CO2e
2010
2020
2030
Forestry
Deforestation Forest degradation
50
125
90
Livestock
Methane from enteric fermentation N2O from manure left on pastures
65
146
125
Soil management
Crop production Fertilizer use Manure management
12
5.8
60
Table 2.
Emission drivers in Ethiopia’s agricultural sector.
Climate-smart agriculture can be defined as agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes GHGs (mitigation), and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals [2, 31, 32, 33]. Making agriculture climate-smart is one of the means to tackle climate change and its impacts which is the focus of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Goal 13) and complements SDGs 1 and 2. Agricultural development in drylands is a victim of climate change impacts. It is anticipated that higher temperatures could reduce crop yields by 10–20% in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. In return, unsustainable agricultural development is one of the causes of climate change as it is responsible for 10–12% of anthropogenic GHGs emissions each year and much more (30%) if human beings take into account the clearance of forests to make way for crops and livestock [34, 35]. Agricultural development must be effective in terms of food production, reducing GHGs emissions and helping farmers adapt to climate change [36, 37]. To build the resilience of drylands, it is essential to make agricultural land management practices more sustainable; improving grassland management so as to enhance carbon sequestration; reforestation and restoration of dryland forests; improving the efficiency and productivity of livestock by rearing improved breeds and transforming high emitter livestock (e.g. cattle) to lower emitter ones (e.g. chickens); improving livestock feeds [2].
Climate change requires environmental conservation and global partnerships that are related to two of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development [38]. These have been strongly strengthened in the SDGs under goals 15 and 17 [39]. Parry [40] stated that climate change is a binary development issue. In the first case, unsustainable development, in the past and present, is the root cause of climate change. In the The second case, sustainable development is certainly a necessary, and probably sufficient condition for overcoming this challenge (Figure 3). Portfolios of mitigation and adaptation strategies to unsustainable development will not result in the right co-benefits. Rather sustainable transformations are important for the case in point [41, 42]. For instance, Denmark has reduced GHGs emissions by 28% in 1990–2009 because of a 31% reduction in N2O emissions due to improved use of manure and a 40% reduction in the use of inorganic fertilizer in 1990–2000, with a further consensus to reduce GHGs emissions from agriculture by 50–70% without a decrease in food production [43]. Ethiopia has also planned to follow similar trends through its climate resilient green economy strategy. This creates a win-win situation between climate change and agricultural development [28, 44, 45].
Figure 3.
The climate change and agricultural development relationships (negative signs before GHGs indicate emission reduction and the yellow arrows show negative impacts on each other & positive signs before GHGs indicate emission enhancement and the green arrows show win-win). The strategies that help to make such transformations are described in Sections 3.1 to 3.4 below.
Land degradation and human population growth in the drylands of Ethiopia, exacerbated by climate change such as severe droughts, have greatly impaired the country’s economic and social development and its food security status. It is clear that combating desertification and land degradation, and mitigating the effects of drought are the basis for accelerated sustainable development, poverty reduction and insuring food security in Ethiopia. This requires the realization of strong partnership building and commitment at regional and international levels. Cognizant of this fact, the Ethiopian Government was one of the pioneering governments to accept and endorse the Great Green Wall for the Sahel and Sahara Initiative (GGWSSI) and was ready for its implementation [46].
3.1 Grazing land management
Drylands are characterized by low and highly variable precipitation and warm temperatures. Livestock grazing is the predominant type of land use, providing a livelihood for a considerable number of people [47]. Optimal rangeland management depends on (i) the current state of the vegetation; (ii) the observed rainfall; and (iii) optimizing the stocking density and rate to reduce emission of GHGs, particularly methane. The stocking density refers to the number of livestock per hectare of rangeland while the stocking rate refers to the ratio of livestock to available forage on the pasture in a given year [48].
The livestock population of Ethiopia, which reached more than 160 million heads in 2011 and more than 224 million heads in 2020 [49, 50], is the largest in Africa and the 10th in the world. It constitutes a large component of the Ethiopian agricultural sector and is well integrated with the farming systems in general and provides the sole means of subsistence for the herders in the lowlands in particular. More than 50% of Ethiopia’s land is utilized for grazing and browsing. Herders in the lowlands take the lion’s share of this figure. Even if the world share of non-CO2 emissions from the livestock sector of Ethiopia is the minimum as shown in Figure 4 [28, 51], sector-wise Ethiopia’s emission profile is dominated by emissions from agriculture contributing about 80% of the total. Whereas gas-wise it is dominated by CH4 contributing 80% of the total CO2 equivalent emissions in 1994 [52] and most of this contribution is from less productive livestock. Even in current times, cattle take more than 80% of the share of CH4 emission in Ethiopia [53, 54]. Based on IPCC [55] guidelines, methane emissions from enteric fermentation are estimated using equation 1 for eight major livestock subcategories in Ethiopia (Table 3). The livestock subcategories are donkeys, camels, cattle, goats, mules, sheep, horses and poultry. Livestock population data for each subcategory is from CSA [49, 50]. The emission factors attributed to each livestock subcategory for enteric fermentation are all IPCC default values ascribed for Ethiopian conditions. The methane emissions resulting from equation 1 are then multiplied by 21, the global warming potential for methane at 100 years in the atmosphere, to yield the carbon dioxide equivalent in tonnes of CO2e (Table 3). In order to optimize methane emissions while there is an increasing livestock population [50], there is a need to settle climate smart livestock production with proper rangeland management, improved feed and highly productive livestock breeds. If Ethiopia’s livestock production is climate-smart and reduces emissions by 38%, the emission from the eight livestock subcategories (Table 3) is less 16,929,022 tCO2e and 24,583,413 tCO2e than conventional livestock production in 2011 and 2020 respectively. The Ethiopian Climate-Resilient Green Economy strategy states that, in agriculture, higher livestock productivity has the potential to reduce 45 x 106 tonnes of CO2e emissions a year in 2030 [28]. Grazing lands are considered an important carbon sink-storing 10–30% of the global soil organic carbon. Improved grazing management on rangeland, such as species management, irrigation, rotational grazing, and fertilization, is expected to capture a significant amount of carbon. Studies indicated that there are potential soil carbon sequestration rates of 0.6 - 1.3 tCO2e ha−1yr−1 from these improved managements [57].
Figure 4.
Global non-CO2 emission from the livestock sector (Ethiopia’s contribution Ethiopia is 0.065 Gt CO2-eq) (Source: [51]).
Livestock categories
Default IPCC Emission factor (KgCH4/head/yr) for Ethiopia [55, 56]
Where: E is methane emissions from enteric fermentation, tCH4/year; EFt is emission factor for the defined livestock population, kg CH4/head/yr; Nt is the number of head of livestock species/category in the country, t is species/category of livestock Emission CO2e /year (tonnes) = CH4 emission/year (tonnes) * 21 (Global Warming Potential for CH4).
3.2 Water management
Water and desertification are the most optimizing factors to foster economic, social and environmental development in the drylands and that the sustainable utilization of water resources is a priority at regional and national scales [58]. Climate change will have enormous effects on the hydrological cycles in drylands with less total rainfall, drier soils but with increased risks of floods from increased frequency and intensity of storm events [4]. There should be a need to enhance physical and economic water productivity. The former is defined as the ratio of the amount of agricultural output to the amount of water used and the latter is defined as the value derived per unit of water used [13].
The drylands of Ethiopia are characterized by scarce and unreliable rainfall. Due to this, within the context of dryland development, the Federal Constitution of Ethiopia in article 52(2d) provides legal provisions (“to administer land and other natural resources in accordance with Federal laws”) which provide a basis for regional governments to take an active role in formulating and implementing appropriate policies and programmes for water development in dryland areas (Figure 5). Rainwater harvesting is a centuries old practice by the Ethiopian pastoralists and it has continued to be implemented in the current Government’s efforts in soil and water conservation programmes to improve food security ([60], Tolossa et al. 2020).
Figure 5.
Impact matrix of water development in dry lands (Adapted from [59]) (UL is fragile and unsustainable livelihoods; SL is more secure livelihoods; AE is adverse environmental conditions; and IE is improved environmental conditions).
Adoption of improved approaches and good practices to water development can strengthen the contribution of dry lands to national economies, and reduce their drain on resources by enhancing resilience and reducing the need for food and other cash interventions during emergencies brought on by climate extremes such as floods and droughts. Improving water development and management, particularly through ecosystem-based approaches, enhances the productivity and sustainability of soil, water and vegetation resources so as to make dryland agricultural development initiatives as sustainable as possible. This improves the resilience of both human communities and ecosystems to climate change in the drylands [59, 61, 62].
3.3 Conservation agriculture
Conservation agriculture (CA) is a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment. CA is based on enhancing natural biological processes above and below the ground. Interventions such as mechanical soil tillage are reduced to an absolute minimum, and the use of external inputs such as agrochemicals and nutrients of mineral or organic origin is applied at an optimum level and in a way and quantity that does not interfere with, or disrupt, the biological processes. CA is characterized by three principles (Figure 6) which are linked to each other, namely: continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance; permanent organic soil cover; and diversified crop rotations in the case of annual crops or plant associations in the case of perennial crops [64, 65, 66].
Figure 6.
The three pillars of conservation agriculture (Source: [63]).
Conventional tillage exposes the soil by deep cultivation and this in turn enhances CO2 emissions from the soil. More than 97% of the world’s food supply is produced on land that emits GHGs when intensively tilled, fertilized, and/or grazed by animals [67]. Conversion of 76% of the croplands in the USA, for example, to conservation tillage could sequester as much as 286–468 million metric tonnes (MMTs) CO2e over 30 years showing that conservation agriculture could become a net sink for carbon [68] and play an important mitigation and adaptation role in climate change effects [69, 70].
A global estimate of carbon sequestration from the conversion of conventional tillage to conservation tillage will be as high as 4900 MMT CO2e by 2020. Combining economics of fuel cost reductions and environmental benefits of conversion to conservation tillage are a positive first step for agriculture toward decreasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere [71]. In the same token, it was also calculated that, if 15% of the carbon in crop residues is converted to passive soil organic carbon (SOC), it may lead to a carbon sequestration rate of 200 MMT CO2e yr−1 when it is used with less intensive tillage. A change from conventional tillage to no-tillage has been found to sequester 4300–7100 kg of carbon ha−1yr−1 [72]. A traditional agricultural conservation practice in northern Ethiopia has been found to be effective for in-situ soil and water conservation, reducing runoff on average by 11% and soil loss by 36% [73]. This in turn could reduce GHG emissions from agricultural lands.
Agriculture can contribute to the mitigation of climate change by adopting practices that promote the stashing of CO2 as carbon in soil, crop biomass and trees, and by displacing the use of fossil fuels required for tillage, chemical manufacture, equipment manufacture, and grain handling operations [74, 75, 76]. In the Ethiopian case too, agricultural development as business as usual and contributing the largest share of Emission (Figure 7), without consideration of climate risks and opportunities, will lead to maladaptive practices weakening national resilience to climate change [78]. This is also emphasized with the Cancún Agreements that developing nations are, for the first time, officially encouraged to develop low-carbon development strategies.
Figure 7.
All GHGs emission trend of Ethiopia by sector (Source: [77]).
3.4 Vegetation management
Plants are central in carbon, water and nitrogen cycles thereby necessitating the need for sustainable utilization of these resources with a view to contributing towards reducing the impact of climate change and variability. The ways in which these resources are used and managed, determine the future direction of climate change impacts in drylands [79]. Enhancing awareness on the importance of plant biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods in response to climate change and variability is vital in the fragile dryland ecosystem where there is direct dependence on natural resources for livelihood [80]. Adopting practices of adaptation and mitigation such as proper fire management, improved forest management, reforestation, reducing deforestation and forest degradation will enhance carbon sinks and help to minimize impacts of climate change. In addition to high temperature and changing rainfall patterns, the major threats affecting vegetation resources in drylands are the coping strategies put in place, such as firewood and charcoal sale, by community members during times of drought. These livelihood activities provide households with an alternative income source when livestock and crop production fail. But these activities become unsustainable as droughts become more frequent, leading to substantial deforestation and forest degradation. With expected future climate change and increasing drought risk (Figure 8), pressures on vegetation resources are likely to intensify, unless more sustainable alternative sources of fuel and income generating options are provided or put in place. Otherwise, the resulting deforestation and forest degradation will go on to diminish development efforts of local communities and make them vulnerable to climate change shocks [81, 82].
Figure 8.
Repercussions of vegetation degradation and drought in drylands of Ethiopia and how to reverse it by managing the resources and use of technology.
Climate change is a global concern whereby developing countries are the most affected by its impacts. Every ecosystem is affected by climate change impacts and in particular drylands are more vulnerable. Dryland agriculture in Ethiopia is more susceptible to the impacts of climate change as the system is already fragile, degraded and unstable with low, erratic and unevenly distributed rainfall patterns. To optimize the productivity of dryland agriculture and enhance food security for the growing population, the practices of agriculture should be climate compatible which encompasses sustainable development, adaptation and mitigation strategies. To this end GHG emissions are reduced or sequestration enhanced while maintaining and even increasing food supply to attain food security. Indeed, there is a need to reduce forest degradation and deforestation, improve rangeland management, improve livestock feeds and rare drought resistant breeds, use drought resistant and short maturing crop varieties, improve soil and water management (including water harvesting and conservation agriculture).
Achieving success in dryland agriculture by overcoming the challenges of climate change requires a comprehensive approach of technical, institutional and financial innovations, so that both adaptation and mitigation strategies are consistent with efforts to safeguard food security, maintain ecosystem services, provide carbon sequestration and reduce emissions. The dryland agriculture in Ethiopia needs reform to attain much greater harmony with the natural and human environment and follow the principles of green economy and making synergies with other sectors. At the end of the day, it is possible to create climate-smart dryland agriculture that maintains livestock and crop productivity as well as reduces GHGs emissions and lessens the impact of climate change. Therefore, productive and ecologically sustainable agriculture with strongly reduced GHGs emissions is fundamental so as to reduce trade-offs in dryland agricultural development to fulfil food security, mitigate climate change and improve ecosystem degradation.
The author declares there are no conflicts of interest.
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Written By
Zenebe Mekonnen
Submitted: 08 February 2022Reviewed: 24 February 2022Published: 18 June 2022
Open access peer-reviewed chapter
