Farmers’ vulnerability to climate shocks: insights from the Niger basin of Benin

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the vulnerability of farm-based livelihood systems to climate shocks in the Niger basin of Benin using a household survey dataset relative to the 2012–2013 agricultural year. The integrated approach is used to assess the vulnerability to climate shocks as function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, and the indices are used as a dependent variable in an Ordinary Least Squares regression. The results reveal that 57.43% of the farm households are vulnerable to climate shocks (31.74% are very vulnerable). The findings highlight that the lowest adaptive capacity does not necessarily coincide with highest exposure and sensitivity to result in the highest vulnerability. Social capital is very important in building the resilience of farm-based livelihood systems. Vulnerability of farm-based livelihoods depends on the nature of climate shocks. Indeed, the econometric estimations show that vulnerability levels increase differently with respect to the type of shock; the increase is 0.87, 0.77, 1.27, and 1.28 for droughts, strong winds, heat waves, and erratic rainfall, respectively. Floods appear to be beneficial to the farm households as they negatively influence vulnerability to climate shocks. The simulations suggest that vulnerability to climate shocks will increase in the absence of adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model
• econometric analysis
• integrated approach
• Monte Carlo analysis
• resilience

Acknowledgements

The financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) research program is gratefully acknowledged. Moreover, the support of the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) through the AERC/AfDB Scholars Exchange Program for Research and Mentorship Fellowship is gratefully acknowledged. The author is thankful for the support and useful comments from his mentors Dr. Adeleke O. Salami and Professor Edwin Muchapondwa, and from the staff of the Development Research Department of the AfDB during his fellowship. The useful comments of Professor Aly A. Mbaye, Professor Joachim von Braun, Professor Kimséyinga Savadogo, and the participants of the African Economic Conference (AEC) 2015 on the earlier version of this paper are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. However, it is not easy to attribute any extreme weather event and climate shock to a change in the climate, as a wide range of extreme events and climate shocks are expected in most regions of the world, even under unchanging climate (IPCC, 2013).

2. The AfDB is committed to improving food security and rural livelihoods by tackling the most important constraints on agricultural productivity, and to building resilience to climate change (AfDB, 2016).

3. They were asked to give their perception relative to a period of 20 years prior to the survey. However, those that do not have 20 years of experience were supposed to state their perception based on their actual experiences which are less than 20 years. In the paper, during the last 20 years means during the last 20 years or so.

4. The sample size was determined analytically based on the number of farm households within the basin with a margin of error of about 5%, and a response rate of 90%.

5. The number of respondents that were not household heads amounts to 71 (13.03% of the respondents).

6. The factor scores and percentage of explained variances used to compute the indices are not reported, but they are available upon request.

7. Among the common activities in the communities there are roads and places surrounding schools clearing, taking care of the water wells, and contributing liquidity to finance school activities such as the payment of the salary of local recruited teachers. For most of the activities apart from liquidity contribution, the frequency of occurrence increases during the rainy season, and this competes with working in own farms.