Coping mechanisms and adaptation to climate change by small farm households in Niger

This paper provides fresh empirical evidence on households climate change adaptation in Niger, characterised by an adaptation deficit. It assessed the main drivers and welfare impacts of food storage, migration, and crop diversification, identified as part of the households primary adaptation strategies. We composed a longitudinal dataset from the two cohorts of the harmonised survey on the households living conditions (EHCVM) secondary data collected by the National Institute of Statistics of Niger, supported by the World Bank and the WAEMU commission. A Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model was used to assess the drivers of adaptation, while a quintile regression model was employed to evaluate the welfare effects of climate change adaptation. Our results show that adaptation is highly incentivised by a drier climate, where households rely on various techniques to smooth income and stabilise household calorie intake. It is, however, weakly spurred by wetter climate and seasonal market fluctuations, although the welfare impact is still positive. These impacts are heterogeneous and pro-poor, although used by well-endowed households to improve their life opportunities. We find that migration is an out-of-distress adaptation technique and has no welfare effects on the households annual consumption and calorie intake. Development efforts through the national adaptation programs should leverage and mainstream these adaptation options to alleviate household vulnerability to multiple shocks. The government should institute interventions that build and sustain household assets to avoid distress migration. That consists of developing income-generating activities and safety nets to create life opportunities and improve households livelihood portfolios.