Livestock-based risk management and coping mechanism to drought among pastoralists: a case study of Handeni District, Tanga

A case study on Livestock-based risk management and coping mechanism to drought among pastoralists in Handeni District was conducted to determine how pastoralist cope with drought in the study area. Drought is a major problem and threat to pastoral livelihoods globally. This study aimed at assessing and documenting information on Livestock based risk management and coping mechanims in reducing drought effects. Despite the assumption that livelihood of pastoralists depends on livestock, knowledge on how to improve the resilience of pastoral communities to manage drought and reduce risks is still limited but is crucial for sustainable management system. Drought still persists regardless of many effort made to cope with it. A cross - sectional reseach design was adopted to generate information on risk management in livestock and coping mechanisms. Socio-economic data were collected through questionaire to 160 pastoralists, focus group discussion and key informant interview. Data were analysed using statistical package for social science software to obtain frequencies and percentages while inferential statistics using regression model was carried out to determine the relationship between socio-economies of pastoral household and the selected variable. Results indicates that age influenced the socio-economies of pastoral house negatively (β= -0.451; p = 0.808), while education level positively but not significant (β= 43.821; p = 0.497), family of household positively and not significant (β= 3.379; p= 0.50), marital status negatively (β=-53.979; p = 0.847),and size of the land, positively (β= 58.898; p= 0.004). The findings noted that herd mobility influence the socio-economies of pastoral household positively (β=91.749; p = 0.01), early warning system positively (β=; 316.537; p = 0.00), and availability of timely market, (β= 11.516; p = 0.021) were significant to the socio-economies of pastoral household .Total number of animal died from drought effects was 3 666 out of 57 785 owned . Mortality was 6.34%