The Climate Change-Agriculture Nexus in Drylands of Ethiopia

Abstract

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.