Local Perceptions of Climate Change and Adaptation Responses from Two Mountain Regions in Tanzania

Abstract

Mountain environments and communities are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Changes in temperature are greater than at lower elevations, which affect the height of the cloud base and local rainfall patterns. While our knowledge of the biophysical nature of climate change in East Africa has increased in the past few years, research on Indigenous farmers’ perceptions and adaptation responses is still lacking, particularly in mountains regions. Semi-structured interviews were administered to 300 farmers on Mount Kilimanjaro (n = 150) and the Udzungwa Mountains (n = 150) in Tanzania across gender and wealth groups. Respondents in both mountains reported not only changes in rainfall and temperature, corresponding with meteorological data, but also a greater incidence of fog, wind, frost, and hailstorms—with impacts on decreased crop yields and increased outbreaks of pests. The most common adaptation strategies used were improved crop varieties and inputs. Wealthier households diversified into horticulture or animal rearing, while poorer households of Hehe ethnicity diversified to labour and selling firewood. Despite being climate change literate and having access to radios, most respondents used Indigenous knowledge to decide on planting dates. Our findings highlight how context and culture are important when designing adaptation options and argue for greater involvement of local stakeholders in adaptation planning using a science-with-society approach. Place-based results offer generalisable insights that have application for other mountains in the Global South.

Everyday adaptation practices by coffee farmers in three mountain regions in Africa

“…Overall, there were similarities across regions: most farmers increased the use of improved seeds, inputs, and soil-conservation techniques, trends also reported for the mountains of East Africa (Kaganzi et al 2021). However, there were also differences across regions, e.g., irrigation was used in the Bale Mountains and Mount Kenya but not Kigezi Highlands.…”

“…The methodological approach and the questionnaire followed the guidelines of local indicators of climate-change impacts (LICCI), a project focused on providing data on the contribution of local and indigenous knowledge to climate-change research (https:// licci.eu/). The same approach was used to survey coffee farmers in Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (Kaganzi et al 2021; see questionnaire in Appendix 1).…”

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“…Furthermore, authors such as Dakurah (2021) recommend analysing climatic data beyond inter-seasonal climatic events to include intra-seasonal climatic events as the latter is more critical to farmers: within every season, farmers are worried about when is it going to start to rain, how long will the season be, or if dry spells will characterize the season. Despite widespread climate change literacy, farmers prefer to use personal observations over meteorological forecasts (Kaganzi et al 2021), so there is a need to ensure conclusive communication procedures of forecasts to bring them closer to farmers' local knowledge.…”

The Central Arizona Conservation Alliance Programs: Use of Social Media and App-Supported Community Science for Landscape-Scale Habitat Restoration, Governance Support, and Community Resilience-Building

“…These changes may be incremental over the span of many years, or caused by the increased intensity and number of disasters such as wildfires, floods, Land 2022, 11, 137 2 of 17 and storms [9,10]. Climate change also impacts local communities, often in detrimental ways [11,12].…”