Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in Niger

Abstract

Rural population in developing countries have been exposed and severely affected by climate vagaries, while adaptation has been challenging due to their luck of knowledge, capitals and capabilities to face risks. This research provides new empirical evidence on rural household’s sustainability and climate change adaptation in Niger. This was necessitated by the fact that although the direct physical and biophysical impacts of climate change are mostly assessed, very little knowledge exists on the indirect economic, social, and human impacts of climate change, and the vulnerability of rural communities involved in livelihood-improving adaptation. The thesis consisted of assessing the level and determinants of the awareness of climate change, identifying the main drivers and welfare impacts of food storage, pastoralism, and labour diversification constituting three of the five specified adaptation classes, and evaluating rural maladaptive actions that drive changes in the adaptive capacity of different community groups engaged in conflicts over access to natural resources. The research uses a multistage sampling to collect primary data on 835 households on climate change, education, and conflicts in Tahoua, the central pastoral region of Niger, and Maradi, one of the central agricultural regions of the country. Two panel datasets from the three survey cohorts on households’ living conditions and agriculture (ECVMA), secondary data collected by the National Institute of Statistics of Niger and the World Bank with 20,323 observations on households and 23,750 observations on land plots was also sourced. A logit regression, Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) and instrumental variable regression were respectively estimated on the awareness of climate change, the drivers of adaptation, and maladaptation and conflicts. The results show that only higher education significantly determines awareness, while information broadcasting highly determines awareness of climate change. Adaptation was revealed to be highly incentivised by weather anomalies and market shocks. Responding to climate variability through food storage, labour diversification, and pastoralism have significant welfare effects on the households. Disadvantaged groups settle with low-risk but low-return adaptation techniques due to their social status. The study found important dynamics of maladaptation, magnified by governance failure, undermining the adaptive capacity of communities and resulting in to conflicts. Development efforts through the national adaptation plan (NAPs) should focus on integrating food storage, labour diversification, and pastoralism as household level adaptation technics, and integrate awareness raising in the rural areas. It should consider adopting more consultation and inclusiveness to account not only the physical impacts but also the economic, social, and human impacts of climate change. Finally, governance at different levels and institutions should be reformed to integrate accountability, leadership, and flexibility to facilitate peaceful climate change adaptation.