Climate variability, vulnerability and effectiveness of farm-level adaptation options: the challenges and implications for food security in Southwestern Cameroon

By Ernest L. Molua. Environment and Development Economics, 2002

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The risks associated with increasing climate variability pose technological and economic challenges to societies which are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. In Southwestern Cameroon the natural variability of rainfall and temperatures contribute to variability in agricultural production and food insecurity. This paper explores the impact of climate variability in Southwestern Cameroon on food availability. It examines farm household's vulnerability to food availability relating to climate, and reviews the interplay of climate, agriculture, and prospects for food security in the region. An econometric function directly relates farm income and precipitation, in order to statistically estimate the significance of farm-level adaptation methods. The results reveal that precipitation during growing and adaptation methods through changes in soil tillage and crop rotation practices have significant effects on farm returns. An essential precondition for food security and overall agricultural development in Southwestern Cameroon is a dynamic agricultural sector brought about both by steady increase in agricultural production and by greater efforts in farmer support, to enable farm households to take advantage of the opportunities and to minimize the negative impacts of climate variation on agriculture.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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In Soil Science

Citations in the corpus

A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on African Cropland (2007, methodology): “…applied to selected countries in the low latitudes, namely Brazil and India (Sanghi 1998; Mendelsohn et al. 2001), using district level data, and Sri Lanka and Cameroon (Kurukulasuriya & Ajwad 2006; Molua 2002), using household level data, but never across a continent using household level data.”
The economic impact of climate change on Kenyan crop agriculture: A Ricardian approach☆ (2007, background): “Though a few studies have been conducted to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture in developing countries (see for instance (Molua, 2002; Gbetibouo and Hassan, 2005; Deressa et al., 2005; Seo et al., 2005)), there is a dearth of literature on this impact in Kenya.”
Analysis of farm performance in Europe under different climatic and management conditions to improve understanding of adaptive capacity (2007, background): “This contrasts with other studies in which, also based on Ricardian analysis, significant influences of climate variability on farmers’ income have been reported, as for the United States (Mendelsohn et al. 1994; Polsky and Easterling 2001), India and Brazil (Mendelsohn and Dinar 1999), China (Liu e”
The Impact of Climatic Change on Agricultural Production: Is it different for Africa? (2008, background): “More precisely, despite the abundance of water, the tropical humid regions are generally not 4 Examples include the studies by Dercon and Krishnan (2000) for Ethopia and Molua (2002) for Cameroon.”
The economic impact of climate change on agriculture in Cameroon (2009, methodology): “Otherwise referred to as the cross-sectional approach, the spatial-analogue approach fundamentally examines farm performance across climate zones (Mendelsohn et al. 1994; 1996; Sanghi 1998; Sanghi et al. 1998; Kumar & Parikh 1998; Mendelsohn & Dinar 1999; Lang 2001; Molua 2002).”
Addressing Human Vulnerability to Climate Change: Toward a 'No Regrets' Approach (2009, unknown): “In many parts of Africa and elsewhere, variability in rainfall and temperatures already cause variability in agricultural production and food security (e.g., Molua, 2002).”