Abstract
Although climate information can aid farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change, its accessibility and adoption by subsistence farmers hinge on the collaboration between farmers and climate information providers. This paper examines collaborations among actors in the process of climate information production and dissemination in the Namibian agricultural sector. The aim is to investigate the extent to which subsistence farmers are integrated into the collaboration process and the impact of the collaboration on the nature and accessibility of disseminated information. Key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey were used for data collection. Using network analysis, we estimated the networks’ density, clustering coefficient, and degree centrality. The study found that both the climate information production and dissemination networks have a high overall clustering coefficient (78% and 77%, respectively) suggesting a high rate of collaboration among the actors in the networks. However, the frequency of interactions between the actors in both the information production and dissemination networks and subsistence farmers remains very low. Nearly all surveyed farmers reported that they meet with information providers only once in a year. The effect of this poor interaction is reflected in the poor occurrence of feedback learning, which is needed to optimize channels of information dissemination to subsistence farmers and enhance the robustness of disseminated information. We recommend innovative communication means via mobile phone, promotion of peer-to-peer learning, flexible collaboration relations with more space for feedback from the users of climate information, and more attention to long-term forecasts and their implications for adaptive actions.
Highlights
The growing discourse on climate change integration into development policy agendas in developing countries (Milne et al 2016; Hajer 1995) has warranted a rethink of the process of climate information generation and adoption in adaptation actions (Tall et al 2018; 2013)
The forecasts and the associated risk warning and risk response advisory services generated and communicated to actors in the agricultural sector in Namibia are based on weather and seasonal timescales
The major generator of these forecasts is the Namibian Meteorological Service (NMS), there are other private institutes like the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre that are into weather forecasts generation and translation
Summary
The growing discourse on climate change integration into development policy agendas in developing countries (Milne et al 2016; Hajer 1995) has warranted a rethink of the process of climate information generation and adoption in adaptation actions (Tall et al 2018; 2013). The communication of information to local farmers in most developing countries follows the traditional pattern whereby scientific information generated through nationally managed information generation activity (with little or no input from local farmers) is disseminated via a top-down approach in which organizational structures and field extension workers are used to broker information to local users (Dayamba et al 2018; Machingura et al 2018; Feldman and Ingram 2009) The efficiency of this model of climate information dissemination is hampered by the disproportionate ratio of farmers to extension workers in most developing countries (Dayamba et al 2018). The limited or nonengagement with subsistence farmers in the process of climate information generation often results in the dissemination of climate information that is not relevant to the context of farmers, further hampering the efficiency of this model of climate information dissemination (Oreszczyn et al 2010)
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