Climate adaptation, perceived resilience, and household wellbeing: Comparative evidence from Kenya and Zambia

Abstract

The growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events has spawned a rapid increase in policies and programs designed to enhance the resilience of small-scale producers through the promotion of climate-adaptive agricultural practices. However, gaps exist in the conceptualization and measurement of farm-households' resilience in face of climatic stress. Furthermore, comparative evidence to understand the relationships between climate-adaptive practices, resilience capacities, and household wellbeing across diverse rural contexts remains scant. Using a novel approach to measure households' perceived resilience against climatic events, we empirically examine the relationship between perceived climate resilience, the adoption of climate-adaptive practices, and household wellbeing in a pastoralist setting in Kenya and a rain-fed cropping system in Zambia. To enable comparisons across these diverse settings, we use a typology of climate-adaptive practices based on their relative factor intensities or diversification decisions. Using the ‘doubly-robust’ inverse-probability-weighted-regression-adjustment (IPWRA) approach to account for potential selection issues, we find that capital-intensive strategies are consistently and positively associated with resilience, food security, and income in both contexts. Labor-intensive and diversification strategies have generally positive but heterogeneous impacts across the two production systems, likely governed by contextual differences. Results also highlight the complementarity between different climate-adaptive practices in improving household welfare in both contexts. The findings suggest that enhancing resilience and improving overall wellbeing in small-scale producer settings requires multi-dimensional approaches. These include interventions that reduce the capital constraints that inhibit the adoption of capital-intensive adaptation practices, bundled with approaches that promote the simultaneous adoption of context specific labor-intensive and diversification practices.