Socioeconomic Study of Climate Change and its Impacts on Livelihoods of People Living Around the Coastal Areas of the Gambia

Abstract

The research aims to assess the effects of climate change on the livelihood of people living around the coastal areas and coping strategies used. The study uses a quantitative method with semi-structured interview questionnaire and convenient sampling method and conducts a survey of coastal community residents in Banjul, Barra, Bakau, Tanji, Sanyang, Gunjur, and Kartong and uses a descriptive analysis. Majority of respondents are self-employed as fishermen, and fish dryers, fish smokers, ship builders and boat riders. Most of the borrowing is done individually and the line of credit is mostly below D20,000 and more than 85% receive less than that amount. More than 60% of the respondents have no access to land and 4.71% stated that they do not have access to water. Most of the respondents rank their friends as their source of borrowing followed by families and banks. About 93% stated that it takes them less than 40 minutes to get to the nearest health facility. Adaptation strategies employed to deal with health problems during variable and extreme climate are going to hospital, cleanliness, eating healthy using herbal medicine. More than 85% of the respondents did not experience shortage of food in a year. But price of food has been increasing over the last 5 years. Finally, respondents favored adaptation strategy is saving followed by involving in other livelihood activities, government assistance, cleaning the environment, tree planting and protection of coastal areas.