Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Smallholder Farmers and Adaptation Strategies in Southwest Nigeria
Abstract
The overall objective of this study was to design effective adaptation response strategy
based on improved knowledge of climate variability and change for smallholder farmers
in South-west Nigeria. The study had three specific objectives, namely: to assess the
trends of climate variability and change, profiles and perceptions of smallholder famers in
South West of Nigeria; to examine the impacts of climate variability and change on the
smallholder farmers and; to evaluate the adaptation strategies implemented by the
smallholder farmers. The study relied on primary data from a sample of 411 household
heads. The study also used Social Analysis System (SAS2), multi-stage sampling
techniques, household survey, focused group discussion and key informant interview.
Secondary data were obtained from credible publications and the Nigerian Meteorological
Agency (NiMet). The Meteorological data from 1985 to 2015 comprising of rainfall,
temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and sunshine were collected from NiMet.
The Statistical Package for Social Sciences, MS Excel, SAS2 tool, Instat and Standardized
Anomaly Index (SAI) were used to process the data. The Coefficient of variation (CV),
Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) and Adaptation Decision Matrix (ADM) were the key
inferential statistics employed for analysis, while the graphs, charts and tables were used
to present the data in descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages. The
findings showed that though the duration of rainfall decreased, the intensity had increased
by 2.1mm per annum with high degree of variability and these trends are likely to
continue. It further showed an erratic rainfall pattern which resulted in late onset and
early cessation. The average maximum temperature (TMax) and minimum temperature
(TMin) increased by 0.040C and 0.030C per annum, respectively, with less variability but
high intensity; relative humidity increased by 0.01% per annum with less variability; and
the wind speed also increased by 2.14mph per annum, with high variability; while a
decrease of -0.035W/m2 per annum was recorded for solar irradiation with high degree of
variability. The perception of farmers varied on what caused the observed changes. The
perceptions ranged from an act of God, sin of mankind and climate change. The findings
also showed a gap in climate information services. From the findings, decreased crop
yield, increased poverty level and a general downward trend in agricultural productivity
were the negative impacts of climate change among the smallholder farmers. The results
also showed that smallholder farmers practiced planting of different crop varieties, land
fragmentation, minimum tillage, varied planting dates, irrigation practice, crop
diversification, off-farm activities, mulching, cover cropping, use of inorganic fertilizer
and change in farmland as adaptation strategies. From the results it was concluded that
multi-stakeholders’ engagement was necessary during planning, designing and
implementation of adaptation actions to ensure effective adoption and sustainability of
such initiatives. Furthermore the Integrated Community-Based Planned Adaptation
Strategy (ICPAS) model designed in this study provides an important framework that will
contribute to reduce vulnerability, build adaptive capacity and resilience of smallholder
farmers to the impacts of climate variability and change.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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