Abstract
This study was carried out to
assess the situation of households’ livelihood under a changing climate
pattern in the Zio district of Togo, West Africa. The study examined
three important aspects: (i) assessment of households’ livelihood
situation under a changing climate pattern, (ii) farmers’ perception and
understanding of local climate change, (iii) determinants of adaption
strategies’ undertaken in cropping pattern to climate change. To this
end, secondary sources of data, and survey data collected from 235
farmers in four villages in the study area were used. Adapted conceptual
framework from Sustainable Livelihood Framework of DFID, two steps
Binary Logistic Regression Model and descriptive statistics were used in
this study as methodological approaches.
Based on Sustainable
Livelihood Approach (SLA), various factors revolving around the
livelihoods of the rural community were grouped into social, natural,
physical, human, and financial capital. Thus the study came up that
households’ livelihood situation represented by the overall livelihood
index in the study area (34%) is below the standard average households’
livelihood security index (50%). The natural capital was found as the
poorest asset (13%) and this will severely affect the sustainability of
livelihood in the long run.
The result from descriptive
statistics and the first step regression (selection model) indicated
that most of the farmers in the study area have clear understanding of
climate change even though they do not have any idea about greenhouse
gases as the main cause behind the issue. From the second step
regression (output model) result, education, farming experience, access
to credit, access to extension services, cropland size, membership of a
social group, distance to the nearest input market, were found to be the
significant determinants of adaptation measures undertaken in cropping
pattern by farmers in the study area.
Based on the result of
this study, recommendations are made to farmers, policy makers,
institutions and development service providers in order to better target
interventions which build, promote or facilitate the adoption of
adaptation measures with potential to build resilience to climate change
and then improve rural livelihood.
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