Hidden in Plain Sight: Pastoralist ‘pioneers’ redefining resilience

Pastoralist communities in Ethiopia are redefining climate resilience through locally developed practices in animal health, grazing, and forage management. Recognizing and amplifying these local knowledge and solutions can help modify approaches towards pastoral resilience. In South Omo Zone and the Afar Region, herders have adapted to rainfall variability, rangeland pressure, and shifting seasons. The CGIAR Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods (SAAF) National Stakeholder Engagement Workshop brought together government officials, researchers, NGOs, and development partners to explore the Pioneer Positive Deviance (P-PD) approach. The P-PD approach focuses on households achieving better outcomes using the same limited resources as their neighbors. Field data collected in Sabure and Dudub kebeles identified 39 positive deviant households. These households demonstrated practices that improved animal health, protected forage, or strengthened livelihoods. Turning individual practices into collective learning can inform strategies across animal health, feed and forage systems, and social norms. The workshop emphasized scaling in locally and scaling out regionally to strengthen resilience and social learning.