From climate forecasts driven actions to sustainability: Strengthening cross-border early warning systems in the Karamoja Cluster
A forecast becomes an action when the people who must act on it helped write it. In the Karamoja Cluster, Participatory Scenario Planning brings meteorologists, traditional weather forecasters, livestock officers and community leaders from Kenya and Uganda together to co-produce climate advisories — and communities begin to anticipate drought rather than react to it.
23 April 2025
4 min read
Karamoja Cluster, Kenya and Uganda
Ongoing · regional network
2
Countries co-producing advisories
GHACOF
Regional outlook forum
Co-production, not dissemination
Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) is the mechanism at the centre of this work. It brings meteorologists, traditional weather forecasters, livestock officers and community leaders from both Kenya and Uganda together to co-produce climate advisories rather than to hand them down.
The distinction matters. An advisory produced elsewhere and delivered inward has to earn trust on arrival; one that community leaders and traditional forecasters helped shape arrives already carrying it.
Two ways of reading the season
Communities in the cluster listen to both their elders and to downscaled forecasts from regional and national centres. Integrating indigenous knowledge with scientific forecasting is treated here as a design principle rather than a courtesy — the two readings of a season are held side by side, and the advisory is built from both.
The effect is anticipatory. Where a household would once have responded to a drought only once it was visible, the combination gives it reason to act on a season that has not arrived yet.
A border that early warning crosses
The Karamoja Cluster spans a border that livestock, pasture and rainfall do not respect. Working across it makes early warning a contribution to cross-border peacebuilding as well as to preparedness: two sets of authorities and two sets of communities read the same season the same way.
Livelihood diversification runs alongside this, so that anticipating a hard season is matched by having more than one way to come through it.
The network that carries it
A regional network of meteorologists, drought preparedness officers, elders and peacebuilders now bridges science and indigenous knowledge, turning early warning into early action.
ICPAC supports that network with cross-border climate forecasting, early-warning bulletins and capacity building, through tools such as the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF).
Source
ICPACAt a glance
Karamoja Cluster, Kenya and Uganda
Ongoing · regional network
ICPAC
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