Households’ Vulnerability, Food Insecurity and Risk Coping Strategies under the Changing Climate: in the semi-arid highlands of Eastern Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

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Date

2020-06

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to analyze farm households’ perceptions, livelihood vulnerability, and risk coping strategies to the changing climate and variability. The multistage sampling method was applied to collected data from 358 rural households in Hawzen and Irob districts corresponding with the 1983-2016 meteorological data of rainfall and temperature. The non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and the Sen’s slope estimator, principal component analysis, and Foster-Greer-Thorbecke techniques were employed to analyze rainfall and temperature trends, household’s vulnerability, and decompose food security status. The econometric model utilized includes Heckman probit selection, three-step Feasible Generalized Least Square, and multivariate probit regression. The results revealed that nearly 95 and 89 percent of farmers perceived a decreased annual rainfall and an increasing temperature consistent with the meteorological data in Hawzen and Irob districts, respectively. Farmers' choice of soil and water conservation adaptation strategy is significantly influenced by age, household size, access to extension services, off-farm activities, weather information, and rainfall trend. The Household Vulnerability Index reveled that households from Hawzen were relatively less vulnerable than Irob. Besides, 27 percent of households were categorized under highly vulnerable group. Holding the food poverty line the number of households with high vulnerability to food insecurity (93 percent) was higher than the current food-insecure (84 percent).Expected future food consumption expenditure was increased with dependency ratio, livestock size, irrigation potential, livestock death, energy cost, and positive annual rainfall trend in Degamba Kebele. The multivariate probit regression model showed complementary and substitutability among the three risk coping strategies to smooth food consumption fluctuation. The likelihood of choosing these risk coping arrangements significantly increases among male-headed households, access to credit, motor road, input-output market, community-based health insurance, TV/radio ownership, and annual rainfall trend in Irob. Thes results have important policy implications such as promoting updated weather information through extension services to create resilience livelihood. The policy should focus not only on current food insecurity but also on those households more likely to be food insecure soon and encouraging the role of rural local institutional arrangements.

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Keywords

Climate change, perception, vulnerability, food security, risk coping strategy.

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