In our study, it is possible that the practice of moving herd onto congested remote areas during drought periods may provide relief in the short term but may be maladaptive in the medium to long terms. Participants emphasised that concentration of mobile herds in a given remote fall back region during severe droughts caused resource overexploitation. The high stocking density results in degradation of resources which may be acceptable adaptation option in the short-term but may increase vulnerability to future droughts as these fall back areas become degraded undermining future local adaptive capacity. Our study shows that there is an urgent need for policy makers to consider maladaptation and subsequent negative externalities that may be the outcome of the current resilient approach to climate change adaptation in the Borana. Although traditional pastoralism has been a preferred and major livelihood source, grow table the study has shown that smallholders have demonstrated the tendency to increasingly get involved in non-pastoral livelihoods as means of livelihood diversification.

For example, many pastoralists who previously specialized in livestock keeping are now combining cultivation of crops into agricultural practice which is also the case for many African dryland systems. But cultivation of crops involves annexation of the communal land as there is no so called private land which also competes with livestock production causing frag-mentation and reduction of the grazing land. This transition into more diversified production systems allows livelihood risk to be distributed over a number of enterprises. The transition into agropastoralism marks the growing need to spread risk through diversifying household income and livelihood sources in the face of rapid socioeconomic, biophysical and policy changes. Moreover, pastoralists in the study area were increasingly involved in non-farm income generating activities such as off-farm employment and Productive Safety Net Programs, joint initiative involving the Ethiopian Government, World Food Program, the World Bank and development partners. Consistent with similar findings from other pastoral systems across East Africa, pastoralists in the Borana who practiced pastoralism for generations while increasingly involved in non-farm in-come generating activities are not completely detaching themselves from the culturally preferred transhumant lifestyle. The other smallholders consider that there is no compelling reason that prevents adaptation.

The impediments cited by the majority of farmers are extremely diverse, including natural, economic, social and institutional factors. Adaptation barriers were in descending order of the percentages of respondents that identified each barrier; limited finance, ebb flow table expertise and weather/climate in-formation, shortage of labour and land, poor government support, access to market and irrigation and finally conflict among neighbours . The three key barriers identified to limit adaptive capacity and successful adaptation were limited finance, expertise and access to weather/climate information. These barriers in general either stop, delay or divert the adaptation strategies and processes shown in Figure 4.

A range of socio-cultural, institutional, financial, technological and natural factors play restricting roles that may limit adaptive capacity, prescribe adaptation pathways and may lead to undesired outcomes. The range of barriers to adaptation in Borana is no different, and that partly explains why the Borana smallholders envisage resilience rather than transformational adaptation. The coexistence and interaction of different types of barriers brings additive negative effects and further erodes the ability to adapt in the future. Among the different group of barriers, financial and institutional barriers were identified by the Borana as significant and interrelated challenges to adapt confounding the effects of one another.For instance, there have been divergent views between state and indigenous institutions on land tenure systems. The state promotes the privatization of user rights, a stance which contravenes the traditional rules of collective resource governance in the study area.