Impact of adoption adaptation climate change onhousehold food security and incomesinferlosemi-arid area, northern senegal

Pastoral communities in Ferlo semi-arid zone are faced with several climate change related threats to their food security and well being. To deal with the climate-change related threats, many adaptation strategies have been promoted widely for adoption by livestock owners in the Ferlo. This study aims to evaluate the impact of adoption adaptation strategies on household food security and income. Data come from a random sampling of 339 households in 32 villages. To estimate the causal effect of adoption of climate change adaptation strategies on household food security and income, the study used the instrumental variable method. It estimated the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) parameter of Imbens and Angrist (1994), which measures the mean impact on the subpopulation whose adoption was induced by the instrument (awareness of at least one adaptation strategy). The treatment variable is adoption of at least one adaptation strategy and outcome variables are household food score consumption and income. The results reveal that on average 56% of household head are aware of at least one adaptation strategy and 94% among those who are aware have adopted at least one adaptation strategy. Futhemore, result showed that adoption of at least one adaptation strategy have a positive and significant impact on food security and income. It increased the average household food score consummption by 8.64 and income by $1, 213. In addition, household size, herd size and literacy of the household head are other factors that influence food security and income. The political implication is scaling up adaptation climate change strategies can be a sustainable solution for improving households resilience to food insecurity and poverty in sahelian zone.