Herd Size and Schooling Decide How Sahel Herders Outsmart a Changing Climate

In the arid rangelands of central Burkina Faso, the ancient rhythm of transhumance, the seasonal march of cattle between grazing grounds, is colliding with a wall of modern pressures: shrinking pastures, vanishing water points, blocked corridors, and rising violence between farmers and herders. A new study of 230 pastoral households in the Mankarga and Gadghin pastoral zones offers one of the most detailed portraits yet of how West African herders perceive these threats and, crucially, which households manage to adapt and which are left behind. The findings, published in the journal Environmental Challenges, carry a stark message: adaptation in the Sahel is not a matter of luck or tradition alone, but of assets, education, and access to land.

The research team, led by Idrissa Sawadogo and colleagues, surveyed transhumant pastoralists, sedentary livestock keepers, and agro-pastoralists across twelve villages in the communes of Boudry and Mogtédo. The region sits in the Sudano-Sahelian belt, where mean annual rainfall ranges from 600 to 900 millimeters and temperatures swing between 24.5 and 30.8 degrees Celsius. Households were interviewed in French and in the local Moore and Fulfulde languages, with questions covering household demographics, perceptions of climate change, adaptation practices, and the barriers standing in their way. The average household head was 48 years old, 90 percent of respondents were male, and herds averaged roughly 90 animals, underscoring how deeply livelihoods depend on livestock.

Perceptions of a changing climate differed sharply by livelihood group. Among transhumant herders, 96.12 percent reported rising temperatures and increasingly intense heat, particularly between February and April, while agro-pastoralists were more worried about water: 68.32 percent reported declining rainfall and more frequent droughts. Sedentary keepers were split, with 71.21 percent observing hotter conditions but nearly 29 percent actually reporting increased rainfall. These divergent perceptions matter, the authors argue, because what herders perceive shapes what they do. A herder who sees heat as the enemy invests differently from one who sees drought coming.

Statistical analysis revealed that the pressures bearing down on pastoralists are not independent problems but tightly interlocked ones. A principal component analysis showed that fodder shortage, declining water points, and rising feed costs cluster together on a single dimension, suggesting a common underlying squeeze on resources. A second dimension captured mobility-related disruptions, such as obstructed livestock tracks and falling animal productivity. Correspondence analysis added a social layer: Fulani herders were strongly associated with fodder shortages, livestock diseases, and farmer-herder conflicts, reflecting their dependence on mobility and shared grazing lands, while Mossi households clustered near livestock mortality and declining fodder quality, and Gourmantche herders aligned with reduced productivity, pointing to structural constraints in herd management and market access.

The spatial story is perhaps the most striking. Mapping transhumance networks across Burkina Faso and into Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin revealed a structured north-south system: Sahelian zones function as departure areas, while the wetter Sudanian zones and coastal countries serve as dry-season destinations. But the map also exposed a troubling pattern. Conflict hotspots concentrate precisely along the transhumance corridors, especially in the agro-pastoral transition zones of central and southern Burkina Faso, where competition for grazing land, water points, and crop residues is fiercest. Road obstructions along key mobility axes compound the risk, turning what was once a fluid ecological strategy into a gauntlet of institutional and security barriers.

When asked why they change their transhumance destinations, herders gave an answer dominated by ecology but increasingly shaped by politics. A remarkable 98.23 percent cited fodder scarcity as the main driver, and 72.5 percent pointed to difficult access to water. Yet 68 percent cited road insecurity and 53.1 percent cited recurrent farmer-herder conflicts, while administrative constraints and high water costs added further friction. The authors interpret this as a structural transformation: the determinants of pastoral mobility, once almost purely climatic, are now increasingly socio-political, meaning that securing corridors requires governance reform as much as rangeland restoration.

To understand who adapts and how, the team employed a multivariate probit model, a statistical framework that jointly estimates eight separate adaptation choices while allowing their unobserved drivers to be correlated. This matters because herders do not pick strategies in isolation; they build portfolios. The model showed that livestock size was the most consistent and positive determinant, significantly boosting adoption of fodder storage, income diversification, feed supplementation, early livestock sales, and transhumance itself. Larger herds, in other words, provide the financial cushion and risk-bearing capacity needed to invest in climate resilience. Education was the second pillar, significantly increasing the likelihood of vaccination, fodder crop production, income diversification, and feed supplementation, reflecting better access to information and innovation. Gender also shaped decisions, while household size showed a limited negative effect, hinting at resource dilution in larger families.

The correlation matrix from the model delivered perhaps the study’s most encouraging insight: adaptation strategies are complementary, not substitutive. Transhumance correlated positively with income diversification (r = 0.399), early livestock sales (r = 0.331), and vaccination (r = 0.311), while fodder storage aligned with income diversification (r = 0.331). Households that move their herds also vaccinate, sell early, and diversify earnings. This portfolio-based risk management suggests that policies promoting a single strategy, such as building boreholes alone, may miss the synergies that make adaptation stick.

Adoption rates varied dramatically across production systems, revealing three distinct adaptation worlds. Preventive vaccination was nearly universal among transhumant herders at 88.30 percent, but feed supplementation told the inverse story: 49.21 percent of transhumant herders used it, compared with 97.32 percent of sedentary herders and 99.12 percent of agro-pastoralists. Fodder storage followed the same divide, practiced by 99.20 percent of sedentary herders but only 38.50 percent of transhumant ones. Fodder crop cultivation was almost absent among transhumant households at 8.15 percent, while transhumance itself was practiced by 100 percent of transhumant herders, 23 percent of agro-pastoralists, and no sedentary keepers. Cluster analysis then grouped households into three vulnerability profiles: those squeezed by water access who rely on long-distance cross-border movement, those losing grazing land who resort to informal grazing in protected areas, and those dominated by farmer-herder conflict amid agricultural expansion.

The policy implications are as concrete as they are urgent. The authors call for the legal protection and restoration of transhumance corridors, the development of strategic water points along pastoral routes, stronger climate and livestock advisory services, and fodder production initiatives suited to Sudano-Sahelian conditions. They also stress that only 21 percent of surveyed households held individual or state-recognized land rights, with most relying on customary arrangements, an insecurity that discourages long-term investment in pasture improvement. With low schooling levels and weak participation in collective organizations, only 11 percent belonged to pastoral groups, many households lack the human and social capital to seize available options. As climate change tightens its grip on the Sahel, the study concludes that protecting mobility, educating herders, and securing resource access are not separate goals but a single, interdependent agenda for keeping millions of livelihoods alive.

Subject of Research: Determinants of pastoral climate change adaptation strategies in West African rangelands

Article Title: Spatial constraints and drivers of pastoral adaptation to climate change in West African rangelands: A multivariate probit analysis

Article References: Sawadogo, I., Bayen, P., Kouassi, F. A., & Worou, O. N. (2026). Spatial constraints and drivers of pastoral adaptation to climate change in West African rangelands: A multivariate probit analysis. Environmental Challenges, 25, Article 101676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2026.101676

Image Credits: AI Generated

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Keywords: pastoralism, transhumance, climate change adaptation, Burkina Faso, Sahel, rangelands, multivariate probit, farmer-herder conflict, livestock mobility, fodder scarcity, water access, land tenure