Influence of climate variability and land degradation on adaptive livelihood strategies of communities in the southern Uluguru Mountains
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Date
2011
Authors
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
This study was conducted to investigate the emerging adaptive livelihood strategies
in response to climate variability and land degradation in South Uluguru Mountains’
communities. Specifically, the study sought to gauge perception of farmers on
climate variability and land degradation, identify farmers’ adaptive livelihood
strategies and assess the environmental sustainability of the identified adaptive
livelihood strategies. Study villages were stratified into highland, midland and
lowland zones with respect to their elevations before randomly selecting three
sample villages, one from each zone. Quantitative data were collected from 90
smallholder farmers, 30 from each of the three villages. Qualitative data were
collected from three Focus Group Discussions, one from each sample village. Field
observation and key informant interviews supplemented survey and data from the
Focus Group Discussions.
The study found that farmers of the South Uluguru
Mountains area are aware of the climate and land degradation issues and attribute to
over 50% of the problems hindering agricultural production in the area. The
communities are impacted more seriously with frequent occurring droughts,
landslides, strong winds, soil erosion, decreased soil fertility, wildfires and to a
lesser extent, floods on the lowland fields due to riverbank erosion. The
communities have been found to own and/or have access to various resources, more
important the natural resources such as springs and rivers/streams that flow all the
year round. These resources are important in implementing necessary adaptive
strategies. While highland and midland farmers grow and store cassava in the field
to use at prolonged droughts, lowland communities grow millet which resists
droughts. Maintaining farms in both midland and lowland areas have been found to be an important strategy for ensuring food security. It has been recommended in this
study that traditional values of natural resource protection be backed by community
empowerment to improve sustainability of livelihoods in terms of natural resource
use. The study also recommends improving the traditional water conveying
technology and its use on small scale irrigation to reduce communities’ dependency
on the disrupted short rains.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Climate variability, Land degradation, Climate change, Uluguru mountains