Farm Household Vulnerability to Climate Change and Its Determinants: The Case of Ada’a Berga District of West Shewa, Ethiopia

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to analyse the vulnerability of households to the impacts of climate change and factors that influence houses to be vulnerable in Ada’a Berga districts of western Shewa zone. To achieve the objective, study area and sample households' were selected by using multi-stage sampling procedure. Descriptive statistical analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Ordinal Logit Model were applied to a set of primary data collected from 421 randomly sampled farmers with the aid of semi-structured questionnaire in six purposively selected kebeles’. The analytical results of descriptive statistics indicates that households that are headed with above 65 years of age, illiterate, less experienced in farming, with more number of  dependent family members, and tenants who are not frequently visited with extension workers, lack of access to climate information, depend only on rain fed farming, no own land, no access to credit at all, no other option of income, no market in their nearby, private infertile land, experienced increase in temperature and change in the pattern of rainfall were vulnerable in the community. Besides, based on the vulnerability index results of PCA, households of the study area were categorised into three (42%, 38% & 20%) moderately vulnerable, highly vulnerable and less vulnerable to their own percent. Empirical result of Ordinal Logit Model showed that vulnerability of a household  was determined by several explanatory variables, i.e., social, economic and biophysical. Therefore, policy measures and development efforts are focused towards improving the adaptive capacity of the farm households, while working to reduce those factors, i.e., both biophysical and socio-economic that significantly contributes to the exposure and sensitivity of the houses in the locality. The most vulnerable families should be the primary target of any future interventions.