Award Information
This research project seeks to investigate the Implication of Climate Services for Smallholder Farmers Adaptation and Resilience in Semiarid Areas of Rural Communities in Tanzania. Specifically it aims to examine the vulnerability extent of smallholder farmers to climate change and variability; to explore and rank indigenous and introduced climate services for adaptation and resilience strategies used by smallholder farmers; to map-out climate services that motivate smallholder farmers to change their farming practices overtime; and to establish framework for management of climate services that fits smallholder farmers to enhance adaptation capacity and resilience. This research will be conducted at semi-arid areas of central Tanzania specifically Dodoma and Singida regions. The area is selected because it is characterized by unreliable rainfall which adversely affects productivity especially to smallholder farmers. Therefore, climate services which accompanied with advisory services, farmers will make a sustainable use of little rains to increase productivity. The study seeks to clear the contradiction raised by different researcher on the ability of farmers to respond to climate services (O'Brien et al. 2000; Phillips et al. 2001; Patt and Gwata 2002; Hudson and Vogel 2003). Despite significance advances in the science of seasonal forecasting, awareness of these forecast have not experience significance benefit to smallholder farmers to reduce climate impact (Hansen 2002; Sivakumar and Hansen 2007; O'Brien and Vogel 2003) on one hand and the increased latent demand of for relevant climate services for farmers adaptation and resilience and so expanding their livelihood (Chang'a et al., 2010; Hansen et al., 2011) on the other. The validity of the research finding however, will be known by selecting appropriate methods of data collection, careful review of data collection instruments and by questioning all aspects of research as to how methods could invalidate findings.