Rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in dejen district, Nile basin of Ethiopia

Abstract

Communities’ perception of climate change must be integrated with research information to improve their adaptive capacity successfully. Thus, to propose appropriate adaptation options to the specific localities, understanding the levels of perception of rural communities to climate change and variability is crucial. This study aims to capture the rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in Dejen district, Nile basin of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional socio-economic and time series climatic data were used. Stratified and snowball sampling techniques were employed to select a sample of 398 households. Chi-square analysis was carried out at p≤0.05. The majority (65.7%) of households had information about climate change before this study survey. Age, farming experience, income, the number of relatives, access to weather information, access to the farmer to farmer, and government experts’ extension services had a significant effect on the majority of climatic variables perception of households. The households’ perception of climate change was in line with results of climate data analysis. The chi-square analysis test of hypothesis shows gender has no significant effect on the perception of climate change. The implication is that all social groups in the study area perceived that there are changes in climate