**1. Introduction**

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) stated that "the major challenge threatening the dryland communities is degradation of the natural resource base, which is leading to soil and vegetation loss, fertility decline, water stress, drying of water resources, lakes and rivers. This degradation is being exacerbated by increasing climate variability and change, with profound impacts on the livelihoods of dryland communities" [1]. Despite the fact that Ethiopia's contribution to global GHGs is about 0.04% [2], climate change poses significant challenges for agriculture in general and dryland agriculture in particular. In return, conventional agriculture in general and malpractice agriculture in particular have contributed to climate change by emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO2, CH4 and N2O. In this case, a paradigm shift at all levels is needed in such a way that agriculture should be at the

core of sustainable development and poverty-reduction efforts as well as those related to lower-carbon and climate-resilient growth [2, 3].

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [4, 5], in Ethiopia, over the past five decades, the temperature has been increasing annually at a rate of 0.2°C. This has already led to a decline in agricultural production, and cereal production is expected to decline still further (12%) under moderate global warming [6]. Furthermore, it has led to a decline in biodiversity, a shortage of food and an increases in human and livestock health problems, as well as rural-urban migration and dependency on external support. Factors exacerbating the impact of climate change in Ethiopia are rapid population growth, land degradation, widespread poverty, dependency on rain fed agriculture, lack of awareness by policy and decision-makers about climate change and lack of appropriate policies and legislation [7, 8], National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia [9]. More than 85% of the people in Ethiopia depend mainly on agriculture for their livelihoods. This will render them very vulnerable to climate variability and change. Consequently, a large number of people in Ethiopia are being affected chronically by drought and/or flooding, leading to deaths and loss of assets [10]. For instance in the period 1900–2019, there were 16 drought events that caused a total death of 402,367 people and a total affected population of 77,141,879 and resulted in total economic damage amounted to USD 1.5 billion [10]. This has obliged the country to make an appeal for international support. The problem is very serious in the arid and semi-arid areas, especially among the herders (**Table 1**) [12].

The livelihoods of pastoralists are highly dependent on natural resources and very sensitive to climate change, yet such events cannot be easily separated from other events such as land degradation and policy changes [12]. The study by Thomas *et al*. [13] showed that the agricultural development challenges related to climate change in Ethiopia's dryland agro-ecosystems are decline in crop yields and agricultural productivity, high variation in rainfall, water scarcity, drought and erosion, decline in livestock feed and the consequent decline in livestock productivity, prevalence and outbreak of pest and disease, increase in invasive plant and animal spices, loss of biodiversity and an increase in the vulnerability of pastoralist livelihoods.

Despite all those challenges for agricultural development in the dryland agro-climatic zones in Ethiopia, agriculture has remained conventional and traditional in such environments. Those conventional and traditional agricultural developments, combined with the impacts of climate change and variability, are not sustainable, retard climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives, and exacerbate food insecurity. Therefore, the core objectives of this review were to assess the contribution of such conventional agricultural developments to GHGs emissions from global and Ethiopian perspectives; to give directions on how these unsustainable forms of agriculture could be transformed into sustainable developments by applying climate-smart technologies and proper resource management strategies.

## **2. Causes and challenges of climate change**

Greenhouse gases allow the penetration of incoming solar radiation but absorb the outgoing long wave radiation from the earth's surface and re-radiate the absorbed

