Building Resilience in Ethiopia's Awassa region to Drought (BREAD)

当前的厄尔尼诺现象加剧了撒哈拉以南非洲的干旱，导致受影响最严重的地区出现饥荒的风险广为人知，其他地区则出现粮食短缺。该项目将结合在当前厄尔尼诺现象之前、期间和之后在埃塞俄比亚阿瓦萨地区收集的数据，以量化对当地生产的粮食和农民生计的影响。我们的主要目标将是评估在厄尔尼诺事件期间促进弹性粮食生产的生物物理干预措施，并提供强有力的社会科学投入，以便评估有益干预措施的社会接受度和影响。我们已经组建了一个拥有在该地区工作的长期专业知识的英国-埃塞俄比亚项目团队。我们将检验两个最重要的假设：(1)与当前厄尔尼诺现象相关的短期极端干旱将对社区、农业系统和土壤产生长期影响；(2)只有通过同时考虑生物物理和社会经济因素的干预措施，才能建立对这种干旱的复原力。我们将探索的一个主要干预措施是通过有机残留物并入进行可持续的土壤管理，同时考虑到与动物饲料和家庭燃料使用的资源冲突，这些冲突在极端干旱时期会恶化。我们探讨了土地管理对绿水(储存在土壤中)和蓝水(从地下水和地表水水源中提取)的可用性的连锁反应。关于土壤肥力的进一步数据将在距离供水不同的两个区的36个案例研究农场的范围内进行测量。该项目将使在当前厄尔尼诺现象发生前两年收集的作物和土壤数据得到补充，并继续衡量旱灾后的恢复能力。以前的数据是在ESPA资助的项目“生态系统中的替代碳投资以缓解贫困”中收集的。作物和土壤反应的模型将使我们能够扩大土地管理干预的影响。我们的产出将通过在整个研究过程中和研究完成后与农民、当地和地区政府以及其他利益相关者的接触而转化为结果。就在2015年12月，我们利用我们的埃塞俄比亚伙伴建立的完善的网络，直接会见了这些利益攸关方。阿瓦萨不是撒哈拉以南非洲受厄尔尼诺影响最严重的地区，但我们认为，其相对较高的人口密度，加上生长旺季的食物供应，使其特别重要。此外，在受影响最严重的地区，土地非常贫瘠，干预措施的影响可能有限，而在阿瓦萨和埃塞俄比亚类似的更肥沃的地区，干预措施可以促进更高的农业生产力，以满足极端事件期间的国家粮食需求。我们已经观察到，在这次干旱期间，随着地下水水位变得更深，阿瓦萨的居民花了更多的时间收集水，由于水泵故障，收集的水更少了。产量直线下降，影响了自给自足农民的收入。2015年12月进行的采访显示，农民试图通过出售牲畜等短期策略来应对这种情况，这将对该地区的农业系统产生长期影响。这项研究的结果将有助于提高对该区域干旱影响的认识，并提高农业系统对干旱的复原力。这将有助于农民采用更好的干旱应对策略，应对时间更长，需要的干预更少，避免灾难性的收成歉收。从长远来看，这将有助于改善粮食安全和营养，提高复原力，减少未来厄尔尼诺事件造成的极端干旱风险。

Droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa have been exacerbated by the current El Niño event, resulting in well publicised risks of famine in the worst affected regions and food shortages elsewhere. This project will combine data collected in the Awassa region of Ethiopia before, during and after the current El Niño to quantify the impacts to locally produced food and farmer livelihoods. Our primary aim will be to assess biophysical interventions that promoted resilient food production during this El Niño event, with a strong social sciences input so that societal acceptance and impacts of beneficial interventions can be assessed. We have assembled a UK-Ethiopia project team with long-standing expertise working in the region. It involves experts in all aspects of natural, economic and social sciences.We will test two over-arching hypotheses: (1) the short term extreme drought associated with the current El Niño will have a long term impact on communities, their farming systems and their soils; and (2) resilience to this drought can only be built through interventions that consider both biophysical and socio-economic factors. A major intervention that we will explore is sustainable soil management through organic residue incorporation, taking into account resource conflicts with animal feed and household fuel use that worsen during times of extreme drought. We explore the knock-on impacts of land management to the availability of green water (stored in soil) and blue water (abstracted from ground and surface water sources). Further data on soil fertility will be measured across a range of 36 case-study farms located within two districts that are different distances from water supplies. The project will allow for crop and soil data collected for two years before the current El Niño to be supplemented with continued measurements of post-drought resilience. Previous data were collected in the ESPA funded project 'Alternative Carbon Investments in Ecosystems for Poverty Alleviation'. Modelling of crop and soil responses will allow us to upscale the impacts of land management interventions.Our outputs will be translated into outcomes through engagement with farmers, local and regional government and other stakeholders, both throughout the research and once the research is complete. As recently as December 2015, we met directly with these stakeholders, using well-established networks developed by our Ethiopian partners. Awassa is not the region in Sub-Saharan Africa that is worst affected by El Niño, but we argue that its relatively high population density, supported by food availability during good growing seasons, makes it particularly important. Moreover, land in the worst affected regions is so infertile that interventions may have limited impact, whereas in Awassa and similar more fertile regions of Ethiopia, interventions could promote greater agricultural productivity to supply national food demands during extreme events. We have already observed that Awassa houeholds spend more time collecting water and have been able to collect less due to pump breakdowns as groundwater levels get deeper during this drought. Yields have plummeted, affecting the earnings of subsistence farmer. Interviews conducted in December 2015 showed that farmers attempt to cope with the situation through short term strategies such as selling off livestock which will have long term consequences for the farming system in the area. The outcomes of this research will contribute towards increasing awareness of the impacts of drought in the region, and improving resilience of farming systems to drought. This will help farmers to employ better coping strategies for drought and to cope for longer, requiring less interventions and avoiding catastrophic harvest failures. In the long term, this will contribute towards better food security and nutrition, improved resilience and reduced risks associated with extreme droughts from future El Niño events.