Analysis of smallholder farmers' perceptions of climate change and adaptation strategies to climate change : the case of Western Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is an agrarian country dominated by subsistence farming which is highly vulnerable to climate change. This study was therefore carried out to assess smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change and adaptation strategies followed to prevent vulnerability to climate change in the Medium and Upper highlands of the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Data was collected from 300 sample smallholder farmers using questionnaire, key informant interviews, and Focus Group discussions with farmers and experts. The survey result showed that households differ in terms of asset endowments, vulnerability, and coping and adaptation capability to climate change. About 87.3% noticed climatic change and their perception of climatic variable attributes indicated about 75% felt a decline in the amount of rainfall, 52.6% stated early onset, about 66.6 % showed late on set, 84% expressed poor distribution of rainfall, high temperature (83.7%) and desiccating wind (52.7%). The major adaptation strategies employed by the majority of small holder farmers included enhancing traditional irrigation, use of drought tolerant and early maturing varieties, converting farm land to tree growing and relay cropping immediately after harvesting. The coping strategies to climate variability are largely related to migrating to urban areas, engaging in daily work, selling of fuel wood and asset while mitigation measures have focused on ecosystem rehabilitation. “Multi Nominal Logit” (MNL) model analysis indicated gender, education, off farm activity, farm size, ownership of oxen, farmer to farmer extension, access to credit and information on climate change as determinants of adaptation to climate change and variability. Institutional support to farmers’ efforts to adapt to climate change is generally weak. The overall analysis leads to conclude that despite the presence of awareness on climate change and its likely impacts on livelihoods of the smallholder farmer, development intervention at local level are not systematically designed to address the problems of the resource poor farmers and environmental challenges. In the immediate future there is an urgent need to capitalize on existing awareness, document, package and disseminate successful adaptation interventions to farmers. As a long term solution it is recommended that institutions in charge of climate change need to develop a national drought and climate change management strategic plan with full accountability to facilitate ecosystem development, resilience against climate change and ultimately improvements in the livelihood of farmers. Such interventions could potentially be achieved by taking practical measures on policy support and Institutional building for climate change, knowledge management on adaptation to climate change, filling technological gaps related to agriculture including livestock husbandry in the context of climate change, applying innovative local level participatory land use planning and promoting livelihood diversification initiatives that could enable small holder farmers create assets to enhance their livelihoods.