The Impact of Climate Change on Child Undernutrition in Northwest Benin

Abstract

Undernutrition among 6–59 months children remain a major public health problem in Atacora. Many studies have focused on the relationship between child nutritional status and climate change. However, the potential effects of climate change on child nutrition have overall received little attention in the study area. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of climate change on child nutritional children aged 6 to 59 months old in Atacora. A cross-sectional, descriptive design survey was implemented using the random sampling technique to select representative samples of 422 children aged 6-59 months at 350 households’ level in Atacora. Questionnaires were administered to the mother and anthropometric measurements were taken. The analysis was performed using R software version 3.3.1. Descriptive statistics were computed and Analysis of variance was used to establish the association between households’ ethnicity, mother’s schooling, diversity dietary and child nutritional status. A multiple linear regression was performed to explore the relationship between climate variables and agricultural on one hand, an association of agricultural production, climate factors (temperature and rainfall) with child nutritional status on the other hand. Results reveal that there is increasing temperature and decreasing in rainfall. The precipitation is negatively correlated with bean, maize and sorghum yields whereas temperature is positively associated with yam and rice production. The prevalence of stunting (45.5%) is higher as compared to wasting (12.1 %) and underweight (21.1%). Other findings show the positive correlation between stunting, maize and sorghum production, but the association between stunting, rainfall, temperature and yam production is negative.