Climate Change Perception and Farmers’ Adoption of Sustainable Land Management for Robust Adaptation in Cameroon

Ernest L Molua

doi:10.5539/jas.v6n12p202

Abstract

The certainty of a changing climate is asserted in the perception of observable changes in rainfall and temperature reported by more than 52% of farm managers in Cameroon’s dry North region and almost 70% in the humid West region. Responding to these observable changes, soil and crop management techniques are adopted to ease climatic stress and insure farms from income shocks and associated vulnerabilities. Farmers were surveyed on their participation in sustainable land management (SLM) programs, and a probit model reveals that the probability of adopting recommended SLM techniques is influenced by land tenure, education, gender, experience and non-farm income. Noting that producers’ adoption of recommended SLM measures is the initial step for medium to long-term adaptation of the productive capacity of their farmland, the Switching Regression Model shows that property rights, access to market, access to extension and adaptation due to farmers’ perception of a changing climate significantly contribute to income security. While this is informative for policy measures required to promote technology adoption, however, participating and employing SLM is a plausible insurance to both current climate variability and long-term climate change.

Highlights

Climate change exacerbates the perennial challenges facing food, agriculture and rural development in developing countries
Households have on average access to a crop plot, with some households having a maximum of 5 plots
This paper has presented empirical evidence that sheds some light on the adoption of sustainable land management (SLM) as a repertoire of technologies for adaptation to climate change

Summary

Introduction

Climate change exacerbates the perennial challenges facing food, agriculture and rural development in developing countries. For vulnerable poor and food insecure people, the prospect of rising inequality is worsened by climate change (FAO, 2009). According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), knowledge-based procedures which integrate land and environmental management are critical to meet rising food and fibre demands while sustaining ecosystem services and livelihoods. With the associated risks of climate change, Müller et al (2011) notes that agricultural production, including access to food may be severely compromised. Climate change impacts agricultural water supply and soil nutrient wealth. Farmland and soil health depend on microclimates which are in turn influenced by regional and global climate change (IPCC, 2007). Such challenges require serious, immediate and sustained investments in farmland productivity. This, raises important questions on localized impact, e.g. to what extent can good land management contribute to sustaining a high level of agricultural productivity?

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