Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic affects almost all pastoralists around the world are highly marginalized and ignored attentions. The extent of pastoral vulnerability towards COVID-19 pandemic was very high. The objective of the review is to show the impacts of COVID-19 on mobile pastorals livelihood. Pastorals have always lived with vulnerable situations like droughts, climate variability, climate change, market instability, water scarcity, food insecurity and conflicts are among other shocks and stresses. COVID-19 and its associated restrictions made gatherings created unprecedented contests for markets, customers, and traders. This reduced the pastoral capacity to purchase food consumption at the household level, which resulted due to the declining of pastoralist’s income. As the demand of pastoral production in the market is low, they cannot afford to buy crops from the market. Significantly, restrictions and lower demands in the markets result in lower levels of milk consumption, which is an important indicator of food security in pastoral communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in school closures across the world. Families kept children out of school to avoid infection and spreading of the disease, which made students to stay at home and some never go back to school specifically due to marriage and other reasons. Generally, strengthening pastoral area infrastructures and building their resilience capacity towards such shocks and stress will be alternatives towards all outbreaks.

Key words: COVID-19, education, income, mobility, market, pastorals.