Browsing by Subject "Adaptation strategies"

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Coping and social cohesion mechanisms in addressing climate change and land degradation in Ghana
(2025) Amankwah, Harry Quaye; Ndah, Hycenth Tim; Schuler, Johannes; Abdulai, Alhassan Lansah; Knierim, Andrea
The West Africa sub-region is faced with major interlinked challenges in ensuring sustainable livelihoods in the context of climate change and land degradation. To ensure sustainable food production and resource use, agriculture needs to be resilient through the application of responsive adaptation and coping strategies. While many studies have explored coping and adaptation strategies employed by farmers, little attention has been paid to the farmers’ indigenous practices and the role of social cohesion mechanisms. Using the sustainable livelihood framework, this study addressed this gap by exploring coping strategies and social cohesion mechanisms used by smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. It made use of a mixed-method approach, including a household survey, focus group discussions, expert interviews, field observations, and key informant interviews. Data was collected from 60 households in 6 communities across 3 districts in the study region. The results showed that social assets such as membership of self-help groups were the most important source of coping, particularly for the most vulnerable households. Such membership enabled farmers to secure micro-loans and receive aid from fellow members during extreme climate events such as floods. Farmers’ tacit knowledge emerged as pivotal in coping with climate change and enhancing soil fertility, encompassing traditional weather forecasting, the making of bio-pesticides, and sustainable land management (SLM) practices such as ridge and bund creation as well as intercropping. Key coping practices reported by the study participants included reduction of food consumption, off-farm jobs, selling livestock, charcoal making and reliance on remittances. The results further revealed that social cohesion mechanisms or collective action play a key role in helping farmers cope and adapt to climate change while improving soil fertility. Social cohesion is mainly reflected in two different structures depending on gender. While diverse challenges of innovation adoption exist, socio-cultural barriers differ by gender. The study recommends the integration of farmers throughout the innovation development process and proposes the need for a concerted effort to strengthen land tenure security policies, ensuring equitable access to farmlands for all genders.
Modeling crop yield and farmer adaptation to rainfall variability
the case of Southern Ethiopia
(2016) Bocher, Temesgen Fitamo; Berger, Thomas
Improving the livelihood of poor households in developing countries by increasing agricultural productivity and production becomes the priority agenda for development actors. However, variability in rainfall has confronted success in achieving this goal. There is pressing interest in analyzing the effects of rainfall variability on household welfare and identifying policy interventions to mitigate its adverse effects. Ethiopian economy primarily depends on rain-fed agriculture. Agriculture is the backbone of the country’s economy; it contributes the lions share of GDP, employment, export earnings, and livelihood. Fluctuations in rainfall distribution and intensity have severely affected the economy in general and the livelihood of smallholder households in particular; the agricultural sector is more prone to changes in climatic condition, which increases the risk of poverty and hunger for poor farm households. Few studies have attempted to analyze the direct effects of rainfall variability on crop yield and its indirect effect on household welfare. Therefore, this thesis aimed at filling the knowledge gap on the impacts of rainfall variability on crop yield and welfare. Moreover, the study explores the role of adaptation strategies in mimicking the negative effects of rainfall variability accounting for household performance decision under resource constraint for Ethiopian farmers. The study employed Mathematical Programming Based Multi-Agent System (MP-MAS) computer simulation techniques to analyze the effects of rainfall variability on crop yield, household welfare and the role of adaptation strategies in mitigating the adverse effects of rainfall variability. Prior to application to the study, the MP-MAS simulation model is parametrized, calibrated, and validated using data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS), primary data collected from the research area and thirty year rainfall time series data obtained from meteorological stations located near to the study area. To address the mentioned research question a wide range of rainfall and adaptation strategy scenarios were designed. The agent - based model enables us to incorporate different bioeconomic systems in the decision-making process by smallholder farmers, which is otherwise difficult under a real world situation where farm households face inseparable decision-making process. Moreover, the model accounts for the heterogeneity in resource endowment, investment, production, consumption, agro-ecology, input constraints, and demographic distribution among households. Livestock, consumption, crop growth and irrigation water distribution models were combined in this study. The household food consumption decision is estimated by using three stages advanced consumption module and crop water requirement and irrigation water distribution modeled using inbuilt FAO CropWat and EDIC modules, and finally an empirical analysis was done by using STATA version 12. The simulation result suggested that: (i) Both current and future rainfall variability would have negative effects on crop yield and household welfare. (ii) The yield of cereals crops and vegetables are negatively affected by rainfall variability: some perennial crops such as enset gains yield under rainfall variability. (iii) Household welfare deteriorated with rainfall variability; resource poor households are severely affected by rainfall variability. (iv) Adaptation strategies such as non-farm activities, irrigation, and soil and water conservation activities mitigate the negative effects of rainfall variability. (v) Improving the financial or non-farm constraints alone leads to increased income inequality. Therefore, the recommended solution to reduce adverse effects of rainfall variability includes: (i) Implementing integrated policy interventions than a single strategy. (ii) Improving access to credit and access to non-farm activities. (iii) Designing a pro-poor intervention (such as improving the asset base of the poor households). (iv) Improving access and use of improved agricultural technologies, and (v) Increasing access and use of irrigation to enhance agricultural productivity.