Abstract
Projections suggest that there are considerable changes in climate in Ethiopia. The rate of change will increase in the future with variations across different agro-ecological-zones. These poses challenges to policy makers to devise climate resilient development strategies, as exposure and adaptive capacity differ among society located even within common cultural and administrative units. The study assesses the livelihoods vulnerability of smallholder’s farmers in the Didessa basin applying the Livelihood Vulnerability Index framed within the LVI-IPCC vulnerability framework through cross-sectional household survey conducted on 450 households in the basin complemented with secondary data of rain fall and temperature. For each agro ecological zones, LVI index and LVI-IPCC vulnerability score was calculated. The result shows that, each of these metrics varied systematically where the lowland agro ecological zone is the most exposed zone, the highland is the most sensitive zone and the midland is the most in adaptive capacity to climate variability and change. The overall LVI-IPCC scores indicate that lowland households may be more vulnerable than highland and midland households (0.067 versus −0.012, −0.013, respectively). Overall; the lowland is the most vulnerable followed by highland Agro-ecology. The findings of the study will have policy relevance in identifying source and forms of vulnerability for better design of agro-ecological specific adaptation measure there by strengthen most vulnerable sectors. The study recommends that increasing adaptive capacity to climate variability and change to the range of climate extremes that they experience (drought, floods wheatear related shocks). The study also recommends the flexible application of LVI-IPCC as tools for the climate related analysis and impact assessment by substituting the value of the indicator that is expected to change and recalculating the overall vulnerability index. The study LVI might be used to project future vulnerability, for example under simple climate change scenarios.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported in part by Addis Ababa university climate change thematic research project. We would like to thanks the anonymous reviewers of the climate change adaptation in Africa for their constructive comments and suggestion to improve the manuscript.
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Dechassa, C., Simane, B., Alamirew, B. (2017). Farmers’ Livelihoods Vulnerability to Climate Variability and Change in Didesa Basin Southern Part of Abay Basin, Ethiopia. In: Leal Filho, W., Belay, S., Kalangu, J., Menas, W., Munishi, P., Musiyiwa, K. (eds) Climate Change Adaptation in Africa. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49520-0_17
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