Perception of Environmental Spillovers across Scale in Climate Change Adaptation Planning: The Case of Small-Scale Farmers’ Irrigation Strategies, Kenya

Abstract

The failure to acknowledge and account for environmental externalities or spillovers in climate change adaptation policy, advocacy and programming spaces exercabates the risk of ecological degradation, more so, degradation of land. In particular use of unsuitable water sources for irrigation may increase salinisation risks. However, little if any policy assessments and research effort has been directed at investigating how farmer perceptions mediate spillovers from the ubiquitous irrigation adaptation strategy. In this study cognitive failure and/or bias construct is examined and proposed as an analytical lens in research, policy and learning and the convergence of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation discourses. The findings from small-scale farmers, Machakos and Kakamega counties, Kenya, suggest multifaceted biases and failures about the existence and importance of externalities in adaptation planning discourses. Among other dimensions, cognitive failure which encompasses fragmented approaches among institutions for use and management of resources, inadequate policy and information support, as well as, poor integration of actors in adaptation planning accounts for adaptation failure. The failures in such Human-Environment system interactions have the potential to exercabate existing vulnerability of farmer production systems in the long run. The findings further suggest that in absence of risk message information dissemination, education level, farming experience and information accumulation, as integral elements to human capital, do not seem to have significant effect on behaviour about mitigation of environmental spillovers. Implicitly, reversing the inherent adaptation failures calls for system approaches that enhance coordinated adaptation planning, prioritises proactive mitigation of slow onset disaster risks and broadens decision support systems, such as, risk information dissemination integration into the existing adaptation policy discourses and practice.

Unpacking the Nexus between Policy Field, Risk Management and Environmental Externalities in Adaptation Planning: The Case of Smallholder Farmer Production Systems, Western Kenya

“…Though the formulation and setting of sectoral climate change units at county level and ministerial and climate change plans under the proposed climate financing program (Republic of Kenya, 2016) suggest semblance of vertical climate policy integration, they do not work to address the Adaptation-mitigation divide and capture synergies a cross steering mechanisms. They are also characterised with inadequate understanding on the interplay of risk on land-use and the potential outcomes at local and extra local levels (Volenzo & Odiyo, 2020).…”

“…However, enforcemt is under NEMA. In previous studies cognitive failure and low capacity on enforcement by NEMA are among key cross scale challenges underlining effectiveness (Volenzo & Odiyo, 2020). Additionally, most of the national climate change action adaptation plans focuses on coping mechanisms with low attention to procedural mechanisms ( i.e.…”

Assessing and mapping water-energy-food nexus smart innovations and practices in Vhembe District Municipality, Limpopo Province, South Africa

“…Since risk is one reason for innovation in an organization and social system (Nair et al, 2016), fast and frugal heuristic logic (Hafenbrädl et al, 2016) in sampling and sample size determination was adopted. Where evidence suggests risk disposition consensus, fast and frugal heuristics logic is normally adopted by selecting few representative cases as it does not compromise accuracy in the analysis of the obtained data (Hafenbrädl et al, 2016;Volenzo and Odiyo, 2020). Noteworthy, the sample size of 200 households was large enough to allow the generalization and exploration of risk from innovation lenses.…”

Determinants of Solid Fuel Use and Emission Risks among Households: Insights from Limpopo, South Africa

“…Statistical analysis was performed using generalised linear logistic weight estimation procedure in IBM R SPSS R statistics version 27.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) to investigate variables influencing emission among the households using wood fuel. Weight estimation procedure computes the coefficients of a linear regression model using weighted least squares (WLS), to give greater weight to predictors with less variability in determining the regression coefficients [38,39]. WLS tests a range of weight transformations that best fit the data.…”

“…Therefore, improving the behavioural and cultural style of the user is significant. Moreover, Volenzo and Odiyo [39] have found risk messaging (risk awareness) as critical in accounting for risk reduction behaviour. Thus, risk awareness could also be among missing the factors.…”