Determinants & welfare implications of the choice of climate change adaptation strategies in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020-10-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
A.A.U.
Abstract
A backdrop of a high risk of climatic shocks have necessitated for climate resilient green economy
strategies to be proposed. One of the pillars of the strategies is the use of multiple climate change
adaptation strategies which are deemed to be essential for improving household food security. In
this study, the effects of household, farm, climatic and institutional factors on farmers’ decisions
to employ adaptation practices are analyzed. A survey of 902 farm households for study periods
of 2015,2016 and 2017 were followed combined with historical climate data in the Nile Basin of
Ethiopia. This was explored using multivariate probit model and fixed effect econometric models.
Results confirm that land certificate, fertility of soil, TLU, distance to input market, environmental
shocks such as erratic rainfall, drought, flood, animal attack, hailstorms, being single, wind, age,
extension visit, radio, neighbors, agriculture, watershed, forest, iddir, local government, religious
and multipurpose membership, average rainfall and slope of land are important determinants of
the choice of the climate change adaptation strategies. The result of the fixed effects model showed
that adoption of climate change adaptation strategies made adopters more productive than nonadopters,
on average. Adoption of Crop variety, Livestock decrement, Soil and water conservation,
Soil and water conservation & Crop variety and Full strategies was found to be paying off. In
particular, Crop variety resulted in the highest number of payoffs of yield. The result suggests the
need for increasing access to quality extension services to increase the information dissemination,
expanding the access to infrastructure, giving property rights to increase land certification and
encouraging social networks participation.