Rural households’ resilience to the adverse impacts of climate variability and food insecurity in the North-eastern highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate variability and food insecurity shocks frequently affect the livelihood of rural households. Therefore, understanding the fundamentals of resilience is essential for enhancing the capabilities of vulnerable households. The objective of this study was to analyze rural households' resilience to the adverse impacts of climate variability and food insecurity in the North-eastern highlands of Ethiopia. Based on a cross-sectional survey, both probability and non-probability sampling procedures were employed to select sample respondents, key informants and focus group discussants. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), one-way ANOVA and linear regression modeling were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that perceptions of climatic variability, agricultural assets, adaptive capacity and income and food access are the four resilience dimensions with the largest contribution to households’ resilience. Likewise, social capital and access to basic services were the next positive contributors. However, agricultural technology adoption and social safety nets were insignificant contributors. Moreover, households living in the Meher livelihood zone/LHZ/were highly resilient followed by ABB and Meher-belg. On the other hand, respondents in the SWS, CHV and Belg LHZs were less resilient. Male-headed households, household heads with formal education and married households were found to be more resilient than their counterparts. The study found that 50.4 % of the respondents were non-resilient and 45.5 % were highly resilient. In conclusion, the adverse impacts of climate-related hazards associated with the existing food insecurity have deteriorated the resilience capacity of rural households by which they became highly vulnerable and could be easily exposed to shocks. The study suggested that unless well-planned intervention is implemented many households might quickly lose their resilience status to worse even by a very little shock. Moreover, enhancing capability aspects should be the primary goal of any interventions aimed at increasing households' resilience in drought-prone areas in general and the study area in particular.