Abstract

Although climate information can aid farmers' capacity to adapt to climate change, its accessibility and adoption by subsistence farmers hinge on the collaboration between farmers and climate information providers. This paper examines collaborations among actors in the process of climate information production and dissemination in the Namibian agricultural sector. The aim is to investigate the extent to which subsistence farmers are integrated into the collaboration process and the impact of the collaboration on the nature and accessibility of disseminated information. Key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey were used for data collection. Using network analysis, we estimated the networks' density, clustering coefficient, and degree centrality. The study found that both the climate information production and dissemination networks have a high overall clustering coefficient (78% and 77%, respectively) suggesting a high rate of collaboration among the actors in the networks. However, the frequency of interactions between the actors in both the information production and dissemination networks and subsistence farmers remains very low. Nearly all surveyed farmers reported that they meet with information providers only once in a year. The effect of this poor interaction is reflected in the poor occurrence of feedback learning, which is needed to optimize channels of information dissemination to subsistence farmers and enhance the robustness of disseminated information. We recommend innovative communication means via mobile phone, promotion of peer-to-peer learning, flexible collaboration relations with more space for feedback from the users of climate information, and more attention to long-term forecasts and their implications for adaptive actions.

Keywords

Network analysis; Climate information; Knowledge brokering; Climate change adaptation; Subsistence farmers; Namibia

Published in

Environmental Management
2021, Volume: 67, number: 1, pages: 133-145
Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Ofoegbu, Chidiebere

  • SLU Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of Cape Town

Sustainable Development Goals

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts


UKÄ Subject classification

Communication Studies
Agricultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01383-5

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108721