Smallholder Rice Farmers’ Adaptation Capacity to Climate Change in the Bawku Zone of Ghana

This paper assesses smallholder rainfed rice farmers' adaptive capacity and strategies to climate change in the Upper East Region of Ghana. We conducted the questionnaire survey to understand how these farmers coped with climate change hazards. Most respondents reported to have used some adaptation strategies, such as using improved rice varieties, early planting, field bunding and rice transplanting. We also found that 68% of the respondents had medium adaptive capacity with seasonal and unsustainable alternative income sources. This finding at least partially explains why off-farm jobs in the area are not available and why 50% of the respondents had offered farm labor services as their alternative income source. We further demonstrate that smallholder rice farmers in the study area were vulnerable to several socio-economic challenges such as weak asset base and inadequate institutional and governmental support. These challenges threatened their ability to adapt to more intensive climate change impacts in the future.