UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Farmer Perceptions of Climate Change and Variability in Villages Adjacent to the Udzungwa Mountains National Park, Tanzania A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Geography by Britta Lee Schumacher Committee in charge: Professor Susan Cassels, Chair Professor David Cleveland Professor Larry Gorenflo, The Pennsylvania State University Professor Stuart Sweeney December 2018 The thesis of Britta Lee Schumacher is approved. _____________________________________________ Stuart Sweeney _____________________________________________ Larry Gorenflo _____________________________________________ David Cleveland _____________________________________________ Susan Cassels, Committee Chair December 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest thanks to Susan Cassels, David Cleveland, Larry Gorenflo, Mohamed and Fatma Kambi, Stuart Sweeney, Karly Miller, Corbin Hodges, Jessica Marter-Kenyon, Max Stiefel, Hallie and Larry Schumacher, Sophia Arabadjis, and Kaitlyn Spangler for helpful comments, discussion, and constant encouragement. And above all, to Blake Kyler, for his love, wit, and close reading, without which, I could not have completed this project. iii ABSTRACT Farmer Perceptions of Climate Change and Variability in Villages Adjacent to the Udzungwa Mountains National Park, Tanzania by Britta Lee Schumacher Climate change and variability pose incredible challenges to the livelihoods of resource- dependent, smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers are resilient, knowledgeable, and capable of adapting their practices to new and changing environmental conditions. If, however, climatic conditions move outside the range of past experience, farmers may be unable to adapt rapidly enough. As such, farmers across agroecological zones in forested regions of Tanzania may turn to forest resources to supplement and sustain their livelihoods. This makes understanding the current and future vulnerabilities of smallholder livelihoods imperative. One way we can do this is by exploring the environmental and climatic perceptions of smallholder farmers. Several studies have been conducted on farmers perceptions of climate change and variability in semi-arid Tanzania, but little attention has been paid to forest adjacent households across agroecological zones. This study addresses this gap by assessing forest adjacent farmers’ perceptions of climate change and variability in one semi-arid, irrigated village and two humid/alluvial plain, rainfed villages in south-central Tanzania. Data collection involved a household questionnaire, which was administered to n = 202 total respondents. This questionnaire was analyzed using qualitative (theme iv identification) and quantitative (chi-square, logistic regression) techniques. Results suggest that farmers perceive changes in their environment, including increased temperature, decreased precipitation, and increased incidence of crop pests and diseases. These perceptions differed significantly between the semi-arid (irrigated) and humid/alluvial plains (rainfed) zones, where irrigated farmers are insulated from negative impacts of climate change. Results also demonstrate that farmers’ environmental perceptions are strongly associated with their socio-economic, livelihood, and agroecological contexts. This study concludes that there are changes in climate and variability occurring across Tanzania’s diverse landscapes, and calls for locally situated, farmer-informed agricultural and livelihood policies that increase resilience in these vulnerable systems. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................1 2. Motivation and Background.......................................................................................4 2.1 Global environmental change: Climate change and variability in Tanzania 4 2.2 Agricultural change and livelihood vulnerability ..................................6 3. Climate perceptions framework ...............................................................................10 4. Methodology ............................................................................................................14 4.1 Description of the study site .................................................................14 4.2 Village description ...............................................................................18 4.2.a Magombera Village .....................................................................18 4.2.b Mang’ula A Village ....................................................................20 4.2.c Msosa Village ..............................................................................23 4.3 Research approach ...............................................................................25 4.3.b Data collection ............................................................................26 4.4 Survey data analysis .............................................................................28 4.4.a Qualitative data analysis ..............................................................29 4.4.b Chi-squared test ..........................................................................29 4.4.c Logistic regression ......................................................................30 5. Results and discussion .............................................................................................35 5.1 Farmers’ perceptions of changing climate and variability ...................35 5.2 Farmers’ perceptions of the effect of changing climate and variability on food production and livelihoods .........................................................................39 5.3 Logistic regression ...............................................................................43 5.3.a Models 1 and 2: Temperature during the day ..............................43 5.3.b Models 3 and 4: Volume of masika rain .....................................44 5.3.c Models 5 and 6: Household Hunger ............................................46 5.3.d A discussion of perceptions by indicator ....................................46 6. Conclusions ..............................................................................................................54 7. References ................................................................................................................56 Appendix A. Written consent (English) .......................................................................75 Appendix B. Written consent (Swahili) .......................................................................77 Appendix C. Household survey (English) ...................................................................79 Appendix D. Household survey (Swahili) ...................................................................97 vi 1. Introduction Global environmental change poses incredible challenges to resource-dependent, smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (Thornton et al., 2008). Of interest in this paper are the global environmental changes posed by global climate change. In particular, global climate change in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to increase temperature, change the intensity and timing of the rains (McSweeney, New, & Lizcano, 2010; McSweeney, New, Lizcano, & Lu, 2010; Thornton, Ericksen, Herrero, & Challinor, 2014), contributing to an increase the incidence of pests, and disease, weeds and extreme climatic events (Dai, 2011; Deutsch et al., 2018; Gregory, Johnson, Newton, & Ingram, 2009; Hirabayashi et al., 2013; New et al., 2006; Patterson, Westbrook, Joyce, Lingren, & Rogasik, 1999). The erratic and rapid changes introduced by global climate change to the bio-physical and agroecological context of smallholder systems produce novel socio-environmental pressures (Mbow, Mertz, Diouf, Rasmussen, & Reenberg, 2008; Mora et al., 2015; Schlenker & Lobell, 2010; Schmidhuber & Tubiello, 2007; Thornton, Jones, Ericksen, & Challinor, 2011; Zhang & Cai, 2011) that contribute to increases in migration (Barrios, Bertinelli, & Strobl, 2006; Henderson, Storeygard, & Deichmann, 2017; Marchiori, Maystadt, & Schumacher, 2012), urbanization (Parnell & Walawege, 2011), agricultural expansion (Tilman, 1999), land degradation (Huang, Yu, Guan, Wang, & Guo, 2016) and loss of biodiversity (Hole et al., 2009; IPBES, 2018), as well as increased risks to human health (Patz, Capbell-Lendrum, Holloway, & Foley, 2005) in the form of hunger and malnutrition (Grace, Davenport, Funk, & Lerner, 2012; Kotir, 2011; J. Liu et al., 2008; Schmidhuber & Tubiello, 2007), and civil war and conflict (M. B. Burke, Miguel, Satyanath, Dykema, & Lobell, 2009; Von Uexkull, 2014). 1 Though smallholder farmers’ resilience, knowledge, and capacity to adapt practices to new and changing environmental conditions is well documented, the present scale, both temporal and agroecological, that global climate change poses is unprecedented. If environmental conditions, especially climatic conditions, move outside the range of past experience, as they are expected to throughout the tropics (Battisti & Naylor, 2009; Marshall B. Burke, Lobell, & Guarino, 2009; Fischer, Shah, Tubiello, & van Velhuizen, 2005), farmers may be unable to adapt rapidly enough. For this reason, it is crucial to the development of adequate agricultural and livelihood policy that we understand both the perceived and measured impacts of global environmental change, and particularly climate