CLIMATE CHANGE, ADAPTATION STRATEGIES AND THEIR DETERMINANATS: THE CASE OF WONDO GENET WOREDA, SIDAMA NATIONAL REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Agriculture is a sector that dominates Ethiopia's economy which suffers from increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters. In the past few years, reducing vulnerability and adapting to climate change through implementing sound adaptation strategies has become an urgent issue for the world's developing countries like Ethiopia. This study also assessed climate change, adaptation strategies and their determinants in wondo genet woreda. A total of 123 households were randomly and purposive selected from two rural kebeles of wondo genet woredas, Sidama national regional state, Ethiopia. Data were collected through households’ survey, focus group discussions, field observations and key informant interview, and thereby analyzed through a descriptive statistics and multi nominal logit model. The results also showed that 84.55% of the respondents perceive a decrease in rainfall amount, while 87.8% perceived an increase in temperature over the past 30 years which was supported by rainfall and temperature trend analysis of Hawassa metrological Agency data (1992- 2022). The result also showed that the most widely preferred adaptation methods by farmers were planting drought resistance crop (88.99%), building water harvesting scheme (85.5%), crop diversification (56.9%), changing planting date (43.9%), soil and water conservation (56.9%), use of irrigation (86.2%), and farming to non-farming activity (66.6%). The logistic regression model result showed that gender and age of the household, accesses to extension service, accesses to credit, and accesses to climate information, farm size, family size, farm income, and nonfarm income are the most significant factors that influence farmers’ adaptation to climate change. The regional government and non-governmental organizations must therefore help to improve farmers' adaptation capacity by providing credit accesses, enhancing farmers with awareness of climate change adaptation strategies and technologies, providing extension services as well as formal and informal education, and investing on the long run climate mitigation projects.