LOCAL PEOPLES' PERCEPTION OF THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY  AND THEIR COPING STRATEGIES THE CASE OF DOYOGENA FARMING  COMMUNITIES IN KAMBATA TAMBARO ZONE, SNNPR
Creators: name: Aklilu Abera
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2014

description: People  everywhere  experience  changes  and  events  that  impact  their  lives.  Knowing  how  they 
perceive,  react,  and  adapt  to  climatic  variability  and  climate  change  and  events  is  helpful  in 
developing  strategies  to  support  adaptation  to  climate  variability  and  climate  changes.
Agriculture  is  the  basis  for  the  majority  of  Ethiopians,  but  it  is  mostly  rain-fed  and   highly 
affected by late onset and early offset of rainfall during the main rainy season and  in most cases 
failure of the Belg season.  This variation causes a depressing threat to the nations’ future food 
security  and  development  prospects.  To  adapt  by  this  problems  and  its  consequences,  the 
government of Ethiopia has been undertaking a massive CV adaptation program since 2000’s. 
Despite the efforts made the adaptation of new practices by farmers vulnerable by a number of 
factors.  For  the  failure  of  the  intervention  efforts  combined  and  interrelated  reasons  such  as 
technical,  physical,  socio  economic  and  institutional  have  been  given.  Therefore  the  main 
objective of the study is to local peoples' perception of the impact of climate variability and thei r 
coping mechanism Doyogena farming communities.  To address the objective of the study both 
quantitative  and  qualitative  methodologies  were  used.  A  multi -stage  sampling  technique  was 
used  to  select  120  farm  household  heads  possessing  245  plots  from  four  PAs.  The  qualitative 
data  for  this  study  were  collected  via  questionnaires,  interviewees,  key  informants  and  field 
observations.  Descriptive  statistics  and  multinomial  logistic  regression  model  were  used  to 
analyze  the  data.  Farmers  perceived  well  about  the  causes  of  CV  in  their farm  plots  as  slope 
steepness  of  cultivation  fields,  ceaseless  cultivation  and  absence  of  fallowing  with  many  time 
preparations of soil for cropping; still other causes have great roles. Consequently, farmers well 
understood the results of severe CV on their farms and recognized as loss of topsoil, reduction of 
yield over time, loss of vegetation cover and grasses, etc. Climate adaptation measures practiced 
in  the  study  area  included  early  and  late  planting,  crop  diversification  strategies  ,rainwater 
harvesting  cutoff drains, soil bunds, waterways, check dams, and trench digging. The results of 
this study show that female farmers showed high interest towards climate variability adaptation 
practice, yet they invested little and rarely practiced. Education and farm experience positively 
and  significantly  affect  the  adaptation  practice  of  all  strategies.  Thus,  the  considerable 
recommendations which are found to be of paramount magnitude from the findings of this study 
include: practices which focus on enhancing the willingness and /or ability of farmers should be 
adapted;  CV  adaptation  projects  should  discus  with  the  rural  communities  on  sustainable 
management  and  uses  of  natural  resources;  the need  to  create  learning  opportunities  through 
establishment of farmers training center; there is also a need to resettle farmers to other areas in 
order  to  reduce  the  current  high  population  pressure,  and  high  food  insecurity.  Climate 
variability adaptation practices efforts need hand-  in-  hand cooperation with concerned experts 
while  planning  and  implementation.  To  effectively  plan  for  Climate  variability  adaptation 
measures application and introduce new techniques to manage resources in the right way, it is 
necessary to involve local people.