Analysis of Farmers’ Perception and Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability: The Case of Choke Mountain, East Gojjam

Belay, Bewket Amdu (2010) Analysis of Farmers’ Perception and Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability: The Case of Choke Mountain, East Gojjam. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.

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Abstract

Ethiopia is heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and its geographical location and topography in combination with low adaptive capacity entail a high vulnerability to adverse impacts of climate change. The extent to which these impacts are felt depends in large part on the extent of adaptation in response to climate change. This research tried to analyze farmers’ adaptation in two dominant agro-ecological zones, Dega and W/dega, of Choke Mountain based on farm-level data collected from 100 households for 2008/09 cropping season. The study describes farmer perceptions to changes in long-term temperature and precipitation, various farm-level adaptation measures, barriers to adaptation, and determinants of adaptation options. Descriptive statistics is used to investigate farmers’ perceptions, baseline adaptations, and constraints to adaptation whereas binary logit model is used to examine the determinants of adaptation to climate change and variability. Results confirm that the most of the interviewed farmers perceived the changes in temperature and rainfall; the majority believed that temperature has increased and the rainfall pattern has become unpredictable; and there was no divergence between the twin perceptions of farmers and climatic data records. As evidence to perceived changes, more than half of the respondents took remedial actions to counteract the impacts of climate change. The most common adaptation options include: crop diversification, changing planting dates, implementing soil conservation practices, water welling and irrigation, adjustment to crop and livestock management, using fertilizer and off-farm activities. However, lack of knowledge, improper policy and lack of land use policy implementation, labor and water shortages, and information among other factors were identified as barriers to adaptation. Among fifteen explanatory variables involved in the analysis, the result of the binary logit model highlighted size of productive labor, frequency of extension visits, resource endowment, and farming experience as main factors that encourage private adaptations; and by contrast, male headed household, credit usage, access to media information, and higher soil fertility status significantly discouraging ones. The Government could contribute to mitigating climate change effects on agriculture by investing in research (drought resistant and short maturing varieties), soil conservation measures, technology(farming machineries), animal health centers, and irrigation and water harvesting development, expanding fertilizer use, expanding market, establishing crop insurance institutes, expanding education (farmers training center and formal education), reforming credit and land policy(tenure, size of land holding, farm fragmentation) and enforcing the implementation of rural land use policies, establishing local meteorology stations, monitoring and publishing climate data, and creating job opportunities by expanding non-agriculture sectors .

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Divisions:	Africana
Depositing User:	Tim Khabala
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2018 10:42
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2018 10:42
URI:	http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/6219

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