Record Details

Building climate change resilience through adaptation in smallholder farming systems in semi-arid Zimbabwe

OAR@ICRISAT

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Field Value
 
Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/10329/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-07-2016-0092
10.1108/IJCCSM-07-2016-0092
 
Title Building climate change resilience through adaptation in smallholder farming systems in semi-arid Zimbabwe
 
Creator Jiri, O
Mafongoya, P L
Chivenge, P
 
Subject Smallholder Farmers
Semi-arid tropics
Climate Resilient Technologies
Climate change
Zimbabwe
 
Description Purpose
This study aimed to determine factors that increase resilience and cause smallholder farmers to adapt better to climate change and vulnerability.

Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the authors used the vulnerability to resilience model and binary logit model to analyse the factors influencing household decisions to adapt.

Findings
Households with increased access to climate information through extension services were likely to have better adaptation abilities. It was also shown that younger farmers were likely to adapt to climate change given their flexibility to adopt new techniques and their access and use of modern information and technology. Larger households were found to have higher probability of adapting as most adaptation strategies are labour intensive. Household’s possession of livestock and access to credit significantly enhanced adaptation. However, households with higher farm income have lesser incentives to adapt to because their current farming practices might already be optimum.

Research limitations/implications
Given that most of the smallholder farmers are vulnerable, such as women-headed households and the elderly, who are labour constrained, there is need for research and development of labour saving technologies to increase resilience to climate change and vulnerability.

Originality/value
These findings underscore the importance of enabling farmer access to information and better technologies which enable them to increase adaptive capacity and resilience.
 
Publisher Emerald Publishing Limited
 
Date 2017
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/10329/1/Building%20climate%20change%20resilience%20through%20adaptation.pdf
Jiri, O and Mafongoya, P L and Chivenge, P (2017) Building climate change resilience through adaptation in smallholder farming systems in semi-arid Zimbabwe. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 9 (2). pp. 1-33. ISSN 1756-8692