Farm households' perceptions and adaptation strategies to climate change risks and their determinants: Evidence from Raya Azebo district, Ethiopia

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Abstract

Ethiopia's agriculture is facing significant challenges of climate change and associated hazards. Farm-level adaptation could serve as an important tool to manage these production risks. This study took the case of a vulnerable farming community of Raya Azebo district of Tigray region of Ethiopia to map household level perceptions of climate change and its induced risks, adaptation strategies, and associated factors. A multi-stage sampling approach is used to select a sample of 397 farm households from the study area and analyzed using descriptive and interferential statistics. Results show that farm households perceived significant changes in the climate, such as an increase in temperature (overall), a decline in precipitation (overall), and altering patterns of rainfall. Further, farmers' reported risks include droughts, floods, and increased pests and disease attacks on the crops. Farmers, in response to climate variability, were adopting various adaptation measures to manage climate risks at the farm-level. Crop diversification (99%), mulching (88%), soil and water management practices (78%), and use of alternative tillage practices (74%) were reported to be the most, while the use of improved seed (27%), planting trees (26%), mixed farming (12%), and home farm practice (3%) were reported to be the least adopted adaptation strategies. Results of the binary logit model showed that household head's age, literacy level, utilization of credit service, utilization of extension services, and access to farm water were the significant determinants of important adaptation strategies. This study implies improving rural households' access to various institutions-led services (i.e., climate information, advisory, and credit) to improve their adaptation and livelihood resilience.

Introduction

Climate change poses risks to human and natural systems on a global scale [1]. Increased frequency and incidence of disasters such as droughts and floods are the most devastating risks associated with global change [2]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that these changes would be more severe and frequent in the near future, and countries, particularly in the global south, will face severe challenges to various sectors of their economy, including agriculture [3]. Ethiopia is one of those developing nations that are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate-induced risks [4]. Among major sectors, Ethiopia's agriculture is facing significant threats, which mainly include crop yield reduction of primary staple food crops [5]. Given such challenges, the food security and livelihoods of millions of rural farm-households are at the mercy of climate change [6].

These challenges are particularly alarming for a developing country like Ethiopia, where agriculture contributes over 40% to its Gross Domestic Products (GDP) and employs over 80% of its labor force [5,7]. In order to mitigate these challenges, farm-level adaptation and risk management are considered important tools to cope with climatic catastrophes [8,9]. Adaptation is an essential strategy to empower farmers to cope with the adverse impact of climate change, which enhances the agricultural output of the marginal farm households [9,10]. Similarly, knowledge of the adaptation methods possessed by the smallholder farmers may make it better to tackle the challenge of climate change [11]. Adaptation has been regarded as a necessary action against climate shocks; for instance, in developing countries, the need for adaptation is particularly imperative as these regions are expected to be severely hit by climate-induced calamities [2,3].

In global literature, there have been reported various kinds of adaptation strategies as a coping tool to respond to climate shocks on agriculture [12,13]. These strategies include both on-farm and off-farm measures to adopt farming and livelihood to climate change risks. On-farm adaptation strategies mainly deal with the adjustment of farming systems by changing crop varieties, adopting better soil and water management practices, intercropping and shuffling crop sowing patterns, and cultivation timings [14]. In contrast, off-farm or non-farm adaptation may include off-farm work and employment, which rural households consider in order to diversify livelihoods in the face of various catastrophic risks [15,16]. It is argued that without the proper adaptation plans, climate change is expected to reduce the rural income in developing countries and can worsen the already existing issues like food insecurity and poverty [8,17]. Hence adaptation is regarded as a key strategy against climate change.

Literature shows that farm-level climate risk perception and adaptation mainly depend on various social and economic factors associated with farm households [18,19]. Besides, it depends on the technological and knowledge-based interventions provided by the local institutions, which can make farmers adapt and perceive climate change effectively [8,20]. Specifically, studies [15,21] show that farmers' socio-economic characteristics such as income and education level, their farm assets such as livestock and farm size, and, most importantly, their access to important institutional services such as financial and advisory services are reported to be the key determinants of farm-level adaptation.

In Ethiopia, rainfall variability and increasing temperature in the different parts are adversely affecting agricultural production and associated businesses [22]. Incidence and severity of extreme climate events, such as extreme temperature, floods, and droughts increasing continuously [23]. Changes in climate and its induced risks are becoming a key challenge for the agriculture sector, which is the foundation of Ethiopia's economy, accounting for 41% of its GDP and about 90% of total exports [24]. Many economic activities depend on agriculture, including marketing, processing, and export of agricultural products. Crop production constitutes more than 65% of the agricultural GDP [24]. Besides, over 80% of the country's population acquire employment from this sectors, which means that cliamte vulnerability is a direct theat to the rural livelihoods. Given such scenario, it is imperative to increase farming sector's resilsince to climte risks by promoting climate risk understanding and suitable adpatation measure.

Given the climate change vulnerability of Ethiopian agriculture, it becomes imperative to assess climate risk perception and adaptation at the farm-level, which have greater implications to improving the bases for effective adaptation policy. Such empirical studies are useful for policymakers to know the current state of local level perception and adaptation strategies to develop suitable adaptation plans [25,26]. Despite the significance of such studies, literature in Ethiopia still remains scarce; the vulnerable areas like the Tigray region, which is facing rising temperature and declining precipitation [27], are rarely explored regarding the farm-level perception of and adaptation to climate change. In the Tigray region, increasing warming and rainfall variability are adversely affecting agricultural production and hence undermining their social and economic wellbeing of the rural community [27,28]. Given the rationale that the area is significantly impacted by climate change and is rarely explored, this study is designed to assess household-level perception and adaptation strategies to climate change risks and factors associated with household-level adaptation.

Section snippets

Description of the study area

The study is carried out in Raya Azebo district, a southern zone of the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Raya Azebo district is located at a longitude of 38–39° east and latitude of 12–180° north. From the southwest, Raya Azebo is bordered with Alamata, from the west by Ofla, from the south by Amhara region and Endamehoni, from the east by the Afar region, and from the north by Debub Misraqawi (Southeastern zone) (Fig. 1). Based on the 2017 population projection [29], Raya Azebo district has a total

Households' perception of climate change and its induced risks

In order to assess the extent of climate change in the study area, initially, this study first looked at how respondents perceived climate change. Following previous studies [36,37], households' were asked about their observation regarding the changes in temperature and rainfall over the last two decades. Afterward, in order to crosscheck households' perception with actual temperature and rainfall data, the district-level data on annual rainfall and temperature (2008–2017) was obtained from the

Conclusion and implications

Ethiopia's agriculture is experiencing significant challenges of climate change and its induced risks, which threatens the livelihood of millions of farm households associated with this sector. Farm-level adaptation mechanisms could help as an important tool to manage climate challenges posed to rural livelihoods. This study took the case of a vulnerable farming community of Raya Adobo district in the Tigray region of Ethiopia to map household-level perceptions of climate change and its induced

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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