Assessing the impact of climate change and climate variability on agricultural productivity in selected climatological zones of Uganda: an overview.

Abstract

Climate change and climate variability are a major threat to livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The IPCC report of 2007 indicates that SSA is the most vulnerable region to climate change and climate variability due to the weak economies and lack of adaptive capacity. If climate change and variability are not timely addressed, they are likely to worsen the poverty levels and further weaken the economies of the region. The poor agrobased communities in the dryland areas are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change and climate variability. There is therefore urgent need for concerted efforts to design appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies to buffer communities in these ecologically sensitive areas against climate change and climate variability. Designing mitigation and adaptation strategies requires information and knowledge on the impact of climate change on the targeted sites. To-date, the impact of climate change and variability on the agricultural productivity is not well understood and the climate change threat remains largely unresolved. Most of the available information has been obtained from Global Circulation Models (GCM) but these models are inadequate to spatially differentiate the diverse ecosystems and adaptive capacities. The thrust of this study is to improve our understanding of climate change and climate variability impacts on agricultural productivity in selected climatologically contrasting districts of Uganda. The multidisciplinary project adopts diverse methods including modelling, experimentation, participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and household interviews. The study will provide a niche for improved strategies. Since the action area is a dryland, it is also envisaged that the results and recommendations from the study will potentially be replicable in other dryland areas and communities of SSA.