Farmers' Adaptation Mechanisms to Climate Change and Variability: The Case of La’Ilay Maichew Woreda, Central Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change and variability is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious global problems affecting many sectors in the world and is considered to be one of the most serious threats to sustainable development. The impact of climate change depends on severity of the natural resource degradation and the technological capacity of the people to cope up the changes in climate. La’ilay Maichew woreda in Tigray regional state, is not an exception in this context. Farmers have been making efforts to cope up the adverse impact of climate change and variability by using different adaptation methods. Adaptation method is largely site-specific and site-specific issues that require site specific knowledge. Thus, this research was initiated to address the knowledge gab: to identify the adaptation methods and factors that affect farmers’ choice of adaption strategies. Quantitative design was primarily employed for the study. The essential data were collected from 130 randomly selected farm households using semi-structured interview schedule. Descriptive statistics and MNL logit model were used for analyzing quantitative data. The study has established that rainfall and temperature in study area have been decreasing and increasing respectively. To adapt this climate change the farmers have been using a combination of adaptive strategies, which include agronomic practices, livestock management and water and soil conservation. The results from MNL highlighted that sex, age, education, family size; farm income, farm size, TLU, extension visit, credit use, and access to climate information were the significant factors that influenced farmers’ choice of adaptation option to climate change in the study area. In general, increasing farmers’ awareness on climate change and variability risk perception, improve farmers’ income-earning opportunities, Moreover, access to extension and credit services are essential to cope up the adverse impact of climate change and variability in La’ilay Maichew Woreda. It was, thus, recommended that policy aimed to reduce adverse impact of climate change in the area could be successful if these factors mentioned above are taken into consideration with respect to the intrinsic nature of climate change adaptation options.