DETERMINANTS OF WOMEN FARMERS’ ADAPTIVE CAPACITY TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Abstract

The specific objective of the study was to find out the determinants of the women farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate change. This study explored the factors influencing the adaptive capacity of women farmers and their contribution to climate change in the Northern region of Bangladesh. The study was conducted in two selected villages Alampur and Dodapar aunder jagannathpur union of Thakurgaon Sadar upazilla under Thakurgaon district. Data were collected from a proportionately random sample of 95 women farmers by using an interview schedule during the period from April, 2019 to May, 2019. Multiple Coefficient of Regression (β) was used in order to test the proposed hypotheses and data were analyzed by SPSS v.23to test the model significance. Five(5%)percent level of significance was used to test the significance level of each hypothesis. The findings revealed that the majority (76.8%) of the women farmers had a moderate level of adaptive capacity while (12.6%) and (10.5%) had low and high level of adaptive capacity, respectively with regards to climate change.Results also indicated that among seven selected characteristics of the women farmers, four namely perception towards climate change, education, family size and knowledge on climate change had significant positive contribution to their adaptive capacity and the rest three characteristics namely, age, farm size, annual family income had no significant contribution to their adaptive capacity concerning climate change. Therefore, the study recommends that smallholder women farmers should form farmer-based associations to share their perception; agricultural extension official should intensify contacts with farmers to educate them on modern agronomic practices to minimize climate change effect, and women farmers be given priority in terms of income generation projects of government and Non-Governmental Organizations in the region to increase their adaptive capacity to climate change.