Impact of climate change adaptation on food security: evidence from semi-arid lands, Kenya

S Wagura Ndiritu,Geoffrey Muricho

doi:10.1007/s10584-021-03180-3

Abstract

The management of rangelands, including climate change adaptation strategies, is primarily responsible for stimulating livestock productivity, which consequently improves food security. This paper investigates the impact of climate change adaptations on food security among pastoralists in semi-arid parts of Kenya, who have not received due attention to date. Using an endogenous switching regression model, the current study revealed that pastoralists’ food security increased significantly when they employed measures to adapt to climate change. The study results also showed that wealthier households and those with more livestock were more food-secure than comparatively poorer households or those with less livestock. Furthermore, the study uncovered a high prevalence of food security among more educated households. The paper therefore recommends that, in Kenya’s semi-arid lands, where pastoralism is the primary means of livelihood, policies advocating adaptations to climate change should be strengthened. Also fundamental to building pastoralists’ adaptation strategies are the consistent monitoring of climate change, the use of early warning systems, and the communication of pertinent information to farmers—and particularly to pastoralists.

Highlights

Climate change is profoundly affecting pastoralist activities which are conducted in extremely challenging conditions of the Semi-Arid economies
We found that the increase in rainfall leads to climate change adaptation
The results show that the probability of food security among adapters is likely to significantly drop from about 82% to about 55% had they not adapted to climate change (Table 6)

Summary

Introduction

Climate change is profoundly affecting pastoralist activities which are conducted in extremely challenging conditions of the Semi-Arid economies. This latter approach significantly reduces the selection bias by controlling for both observed and unobserved differences among the treatment groups despite its distributional (tri-variate normal distribution) and exclusion restrictions (Kassie et al., 2014) We adopt this latter method (switching regression) to estimate the impact of climate change adaptation on food security among the sampled pastoralist households. We follow past empirical studies (Di Falco et al, 2011; Di Falco & Veronesi 2013) and hypothesise that average rainfall, average temperature and early warning systems are the variables that affect climate change adaptation decisions directly but not household food security We use these three variables as part of the explanatory variables in the selection model (Eqn 2) but exclude them in the subsequent outcome models (Eqn 8 – Eqn 11).

Determinants of climate change adaptation and household food security

Impact of climate change adaptation on household food security

Conclusions and policy implications

Discussion