Climate risk perception among women farmers in Kwara North, Nigeria

Abstract

Past academic debates have identified the need to mainstream indigenous knowledge and gender perspectives in relation to climate risk analysis, perceptions of vulnerability, experiences, and coping mechanisms. The justification for this is that gender often dictates who gains and who loses in environmental disasters and because women make up almost 80% of the agricultural workforce in the tropics and are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, they have learned to adapt to climate variability and their adaptation over time has been through indigenous knowledge practices. Through questionnaires, Focus Group Discussions and observations, this study attempts to understand how women farmers perceive climate risk in rural parts of Nigeria. The women farmers' perception of climate change was viewed from different angles, ranging from causes, weather events, rainfall to temperature. Our result indicates that the women farmers' understanding of local forcing of climate change (i.e. local actions that contribute to climate variability) is low and it varies across the five Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the study area. Women farmers perceive climate change as a problem that could have a long-lasting effect on their livelihood systems.