VULNERABILITY ATTENUATION AND RESILIENCE ENHANCEMENT TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND CHANGE THROUGH AGROFORESTRY PRACTICES IN SMALLHOLDER FARMING SYSTEMS IN THE NORTH-WEST REGION OF CAMEROON

Résumé

Climate variability and change is today one of the greatest existential threats facing humanity. The ravaging effects of this scourge spell doom for stakeholders involved in climate dependent sectors like agriculture. Promoting climate-smart practices that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience becomes incumbent. It is within this framework that this study sought to assess the contributions of agroforestry practices towards the attenuation of vulnerability and the enhancement of resilience of smallholder farming systems in Cameroon in general and Mezam division, north western Cameroon in particular faced with climate variability and change. Both secondary and primary data were collected for the study. Secondary data collected included mainly climate data (temperature and rainfall). Primary data on its part was collected through household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and inventories on smallholder farmers’ agroforestry and non-agroforestry plots. Data collected was analyzed on SPSS 20, Excel 2007 and STATA 13 making use of descriptive and inferential statistics. From the results obtained, both smallholder farmers’ perceptions and analyzed climate data revealed an increase in temperature and a marked reduction in the total quantity of rainfall in recent decades. It was also found that smallholder farmers perceived recurrent extreme weather events (99%) and poverty (96%) as the main drivers of vulnerability to climate variability and change. Household size, age of household head, household income, access to information, and access to land had a significant negative causal relationship (p<0.05) with smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to climate variability and change demonstrating that these variables have a high propensity to reduce smallholder farmers’ vulnerability. The main agroforestry practices of smallholder farmers were home gardens with livestock (53%), trees on croplands (48%), and home gardens (44%); with agroforestry practices categorized under the agrosilvicultural agroforestry system (with 7 practices) being the most dominant. The findings equally revealed that five agroforestry practices (home garden with livestock, trees on croplands, trees on grazing lands, coffee-based agroforestry and Taungya) had a strong negative causal relationship (p<0.05) with smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to climate variability and change, which shows that these agroforestry practices play a major role towards reducing smallholder farmers’ vulnerability. It was also found that four agroforestry practices (home garden with livestock, home gardens, trees on grazing lands and coffee-based agroforestry) had a significant positive causal relationship (p<0.05) with smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate variability and change, which proves that these agroforestry practices play a major role towards enhancing smallholder farmers’ resilience. Thus, agroforestry practices play a significant role towards reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience of smallholder farmers faced with climate variability and change. Based on the findings of this study, it is highly recommended that agroforestry practices and systems be integrated into the mainstream as a best practice owing to its ability to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to climate variability and change especially for smallholder farmers.

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