LOCAL PEOPLES' PERCEPTION OF THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND THEIR COPING STRATEGIES THE CASE OF DOYOGENA FARMING COMMUNITIES IN KAMBATA TAMBARO ZONE, SNNPR

Abstract

People everywhere experience changes and events that impact their lives. Knowing how they perceive, react, and adapt to climatic variability and climate change and events is helpful in developing strategies to support adaptation to climate variability and climate changes. Agriculture is the basis for the majority of Ethiopians, but it is mostly rain-fed and highly affected by late onset and early offset of rainfall during the main rainy season and in most cases failure of the Belg season. This variation causes a depressing threat to the nations’ future food security and development prospects. To adapt by this problems and its consequences, the government of Ethiopia has been undertaking a massive CV adaptation program since 2000’s. Despite the efforts made the adaptation of new practices by farmers vulnerable by a number of factors. For the failure of the intervention efforts combined and interrelated reasons such as technical, physical, socio economic and institutional have been given. Therefore the main objective of the study is to local peoples' perception of the impact of climate variability and thei r coping mechanism Doyogena farming communities. To address the objective of the study both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used. A multi -stage sampling technique was used to select 120 farm household heads possessing 245 plots from four PAs. The qualitative data for this study were collected via questionnaires, interviewees, key informants and field observations. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression model were used to analyze the data. Farmers perceived well about the causes of CV in their farm plots as slope steepness of cultivation fields, ceaseless cultivation and absence of fallowing with many time preparations of soil for cropping; still other causes have great roles. Consequently, farmers well understood the results of severe CV on their farms and recognized as loss of topsoil, reduction of yield over time, loss of vegetation cover and grasses, etc. Climate adaptation measures practiced in the study area included early and late planting, crop diversification strategies ,rainwater harvesting cutoff drains, soil bunds, waterways, check dams, and trench digging. The results of this study show that female farmers showed high interest towards climate variability adaptation practice, yet they invested little and rarely practiced. Education and farm experience positively and significantly affect the adaptation practice of all strategies. Thus, the considerable recommendations which are found to be of paramount magnitude from the findings of this study include: practices which focus on enhancing the willingness and /or ability of farmers should be adapted; CV adaptation projects should discus with the rural communities on sustainable management and uses of natural resources; the need to create learning opportunities through establishment of farmers training center; there is also a need to resettle farmers to other areas in order to reduce the current high population pressure, and high food insecurity. Climate variability adaptation practices efforts need hand- in- hand cooperation with concerned experts while planning and implementation. To effectively plan for Climate variability adaptation measures application and introduce new techniques to manage resources in the right way, it is necessary to involve local people.