How are African livestock farmers responding to climate variability and change? A systematic review
Contact us if these videos are not relevant.
Contact us if these videos are not relevant.
View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.African livestock farmers face climate hazards. This review synthesizes their adaptation strategies, highlighting herd and feed management as common responses, but identifies critical knowledge gaps in Central and Northern Africa and commercial farming systems.
Area Of Science
- Agricultural Science
- Climate Change Adaptation
- African Studies
Background
- Livestock are crucial for African livelihoods, food security, and mixed farming systems, providing protein, power, and manure.
- African livestock farmers are highly vulnerable to climate variability and change, necessitating adaptation strategies.
- Existing research on farmer responses to climate change has varied outcomes, indicating a need for synthesis.
Purpose Of The Study
- To systematically review and synthesize the state of knowledge on livestock farmers' responses to climate variability and change in Africa.
- To identify drivers, outcomes, barriers, and enablers of these adaptation strategies.
- To highlight research gaps for future policy and practice.
Main Methods
- Systematic literature review of articles published between 2014 and 2022.
- Analysis of 186 articles from 32 African countries, coding 1089 farmer responses.
- Focus on small-scale mixed crop-livestock systems involving cattle, sheep, and goats.
Main Results
- Herd management (437 responses) and feed/pasture management (294 responses) were the most common adaptation strategies documented.
- Drought was the primary climate driver (567 responses).
- Key barriers included financial constraints (116), lack of information (98), and insufficient government support (67).
Conclusions
- A significant body of literature exists on climate adaptation in African livestock systems, primarily focusing on smallholders in Eastern Africa.
- Notable research gaps include Central and Northern Africa, and adaptation strategies of commercial farming systems.
- Future research should address these gaps and deepen the understanding of adaptation barriers and enablers to inform effective interventions.
Contact us if these videos are not relevant.
Contact us if these videos are not relevant.
Related Concept Videos
Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.
Past Periods of Warming and Cooling
In...
Climate refers to the prevailing weather conditions in a specific area over an extended period. As the saying goes, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.” Climate is influenced by geographic factors, such as latitude, terrain, and proximity to bodies of water.
Weather and Climate
Weather and climate are related, though they differ in terms of time scale and predictability. Weather refers to the state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, whereas climate...
In statistics, several tools are used to interpret the data. Measures of central tendency represent the characteristics of the data, such as mean, median, and mode. Additionally, measures of variance like standard deviation and range are used to find the spread of data from the mean. Relative standing measures the distance between data locations. Commonly used measures of relative standings are percentile, z score, and quartiles.
Percentiles are a type of fractile that partition data into...
Data are individual items of information obtained from a population or sample. Data may be classified as qualitative (categorical), quantitative continuous, or quantitative discrete. Because it is not practical to measure the entire population in a study, researchers use samples to represent the population. A random sample is a representative group from the population chosen by using a method that gives each individual in the population an equal chance of being included in the sample. Random...
Consistent with the law of mass action, an equilibrium stressed by a change in concentration will shift to re-establish equilibrium without any change in the value of the equilibrium constant, K. When an equilibrium shifts in response to a temperature change, however, it is re-established with a different relative composition that exhibits a different value for the equilibrium constant.
To understand this phenomenon, consider the elementary reaction:
Since this is an elementary reaction, the...
For gas-phase equilibria, changes in the concentrations of reactants and products can occur with altered volume and pressure. The partial pressure, P, of an ideal gas is proportional to its molar concentration, M.
So changes in the partial pressures of any reactant or product are essentially changes in concentrations; therefore, these changes yield the same effects on equilibria. Aside from adding or removing reactants or products, the pressures (concentrations) of species in a gas-phase...