Agro-pastoral coping strategies to climate change and variability in Ilemela and Magu districts

Abstract

Effects of climate change vary across regions, farming systems, households and individuals. Agro-pastoralists, through experimentation over time, have developed different strategies to cope with climate change and variability. In Ilemela and Magu Districts, little has been done in evaluating coping strategies developed to address the impacts of climate variability to agro-pastoralism and the socio-economic factors influencing their coping capacity. This study therefore highlighted on the coping strategies that agro-pastoralists in the two districts are employing to counteract the effects of climate change and variability. Data were collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews using questionnaire which was administered to 120 households in selected villages. Analysis was through descriptive statistics, multinomial logistic regression model, complemented with the time-series analysis of annual and seasonal climatic values. The results of analysis indicated that households were aware of climate variability and mentioned increase in unpredictability of rainfall patterns, decline in natural forest cover, disappearance of some species, increase in temperature and incidences of droughts leading to drying-up of some rivers and springs as indicators of climate change. The available coping strategies included migration (87%), diversification of activities (78%), splitting herds (55%), making boreholes (50%) and using tap water (65%). The socio-economic factors that significantly influenced the adaptive capacity (p<0.05) were herd size, number of years lived and age of the head of household as they had a significance level of 0.032, 0.047 and 0.011, respectively. The study recommends a need for appropriate interventions ensuring management of rangeland and water availability so as to improve livestock productivity. Socio-economic factors spotted can be a determining factor in upgrading and introduction of more advanced technologies and strategies.