Kesedaran terhadap Perubahan Iklim dan Adaptasi di Kalangan Komuniti Petani dan Penternak di Central Sokoto Close-Settle Zone, Barat-laut Nigeria

Abstract

General consensus almost exists amongst scholars across many fields that climate change is a reality, its impacts are already with us and no part of the world or group of people are immune from its impacts. In facts, during recent decades scholars are busy assessing its impact now and in the foreseeable future. Within the fragile dryland ecosystem of Sokoto in the North-western part of Nigeria, some of the immediate impacts of climate change includes declining rainfall, increasing temperature and extreme weather events such as droughts, severe windstorms, heat waves and flooding among others. These presents some serious threats to both the natural ecosystem and people depending on the ecosystem for their livelihood particularly crop farmers and livestock pastoralists that constitutes over 70% of the inhabitant of the area. Under this kind of situation, the need for increasing awareness about the causes, impacts, mitigation and adaptation to climate change cannot be over emphasised particularly among farmers and herdsmen due to the high sensitivity of their livelihood sources to climate change. Using a semi-structured questionnaire with both open and close ended questions and simple statistical techniques, this research tries to investigate the level of climate change awareness and adaptation strategies among farmers and herdsmen in the Sokoto Close-settled Zone of North-western Nigeria. The result revealed a fair level of awareness of climate change particularly amongst the youth in the area. Some climate change adaptation strategies in the area and their implications were also discussed while recommendations on the way forward provided.