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.