Socio-economic Impacts of Climate Change on Smallholder Livelihoods in Shashogo District, Hadiya Zone, South Ethiopia

Abstract

Livelihood strategies, mainly crop production and livestock production on which smallholders depends are seriously threatened by climate change. This study examines socioeconomic impacts of Climate Change on Smallholder Livelihoods in Shashogo district Hadiya zone, south Ethiopia with specific objectives of investigating smallholders’ perceptions to climate change and examining climate change impacts on smallholders. The data for this study was collected from both primary and secondary sources by using multi-stage random sampling techniques. As a result of that 43 households from poor, 88 households from medium and 31 households from rich; a total of 162 households were selected by using rule of thumb (N ≥ 50+8n) as a source of primary data. In addition key informants’ interview and focus group discussions were also used as a primary data sources. While secondary data was collected from review of literatures and related documents both from published and unpublished sources. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data on households, perception to climate change and household choice of adaptation strategies. As a result of that smallholders perceived that there was significant evidence that shows climate change in Shashogo district. Moreover smallholder’s perceptions to drought and flood impacts were important evidences that verify the prevalence of climate change in the study area.  Besides to household perception; local climate change indicators like temperature increase, decreasing of rainfall, shortening of cropping period, rainfall erratic nature, drought incident and flood impacts substantiate existence of climate change in the study area. Moreover the temperature and rainfall trend analysis shows observable increase of mean annual temperature by 0.16°c per year and decreasing of mean annual rainfall by 4.98mm per year in the last 25 years. Because of the climate related problems smallholders were facing drought and flood impacts, food shortage and emergency of crop disease in the district.

Keywords: climate change, impact, smallholders’ livelihood.