The impact of climate variability on food and nutrition security in Ethiopia
Student name: Mr Kidane Badeg Mirdeto
Guide: Dr Chubamenla Jamir
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: Ethiopian Public Health Institute
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Arega Zeru Melaku
Abstract: The study modeled the impact of spatial and temporal climate variability on food and nutrition security in Ethiopia using the calorie intake and child anthropometric measures and integrating with climate variables [precipitation, temperature and evapotranspiration]. Spatial and trend analysis were conducted to examine the distribution and trend of precipitation, maximum temperature and evapotranspiration, calorie intake and child undernutrition prevalence. Then, zonal level two-period [for food security] and three-period [for nutrition security] panel data models were constructed and estimated using the fixed-effect [for calorie intake, underweight and wasting models] and random-effect [for stunting model] estimation procedures after undertaking the Hausman and BP model specification test.
The study observed that elevation determines precipitation and temperature distribution and the Ethiopian highlands receives bulk of the country’s rainfall as compared to the lowlands where temperature and evapotranspiration are high for most seasons. Precipitation shows higher variability in drier regions and during growing season while high temperature variability is observed in the higher elevation zones. The precipitation shows an increasing trend despite the country steadily becoming warm for the last three decades. The midland and agro-pastoralist zones had higher gross and net calorie intake compared to the other agro-ecological and livelihood zones that shows zones with diversified livelihood sources had higher calorie intake while the mono-livelihood zones had less calorie intake.
The study revealed higher variation [equivalent to the country’s average] in terms of calorie intake among zones compare to within zone over the study period that indicate the spatial inequality in food consumption. Stunting and underweight prevalence showed a steady and remarkable decreasing pattern over time across in all livelihood and agro-ecological zones while child wasting prevalence keep stagnant and shifted from the west to east. However, it continued to exist uneven and unacceptable level and spatial inequality of stunting, underweight and wasting prevalence and calorie intake.
Further, the findings showed that variability in precipitation and evaporation have significant impacts on the amount of calories intake, underweight and wasting in the most of the midland and highland models. Climate variabilities have strong impacts on acute malnutrition [insufficient calorie intake, underweight and wasting] compare to the chronic undernutrition [stunting]. The magnitude of the impact varies across the agro-ecological zones; the impact being relatively lower in the lowlands. The study concludes that maintaining the water balance and moisture of the highland and midlands regions is an important measure in addressing acute malnutrition since precipitation, temperature and evapotranspiration level are significant determinants of the surface water balance whereas the reason of insignificance of climate variables in most of the lowland models need further studies.
