Climate Variability and Its Effects on Gender and Coping Strategies in Baringo County, Kenya

Abstract

Climate variability has often been described as one of the most pressing environmental challenges. Our lifestyles, economy, health, income, livelihood and our social well-being are all affected by climate. This paper therefore, assessed climate variability, its effect of gender and coping strategies they adopt in Baringo County, Kenya. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the data obtained for the study. Findings show that there is consisent decrease in rainfall and increase in temperature in recent times. Male gender dominates household decisions and roles such as land preparation, livestock keeping/feeding, pesticide application and fence construction in Baringo County, Kenya while the female gender dominates household roles such as water supply, domestic home chores and more of agricultural activities. Livestock migration was the major traditional coping strategy adopted in Baringo County. 56.8% of the respondents shows that cutting grasses for livestock was the major short term coping strategy adopted while Rainfall harvesting and storage (5.92%) was the least adopted in the studied area. Long term coping strategy to climate variability mostly adopted by the rural populace in is livestock migration (48.52%), it was also observed here that the least long term coping strategy adopted is finding alternative job as reputed by 4.44% of the respondents. Special intervention projects such as rain water harvesting techniques, drought resistant crops, short term crops etc, should be provided to rural populace/dwellers in Baringo County, and other parts of Kenya experiencing severe variability in climate, resulting to drought.