Increasing Resilience in Changing Climate among Rural Households : Evidence from West Shewa , Ethiopia

Shared ranges of complex risks, including climate change, environmental degradation, and conflict are exacerbating the challenges faced by farm households. This research aimed to measure measn to increase farm households resilience to changing climate using seven blocs of the resilience framework. Resilience index was defined as a function of agricultural inputs and technology, social safety nets, access to public services, access to food and income, access to assets, stability and adaptive capacity blocs. The estimation was made separately using principal component analysis. Three components were retained to estimate resilience. Under the first component, all blocs, except social safety nets and adaptive capacity, were positively correlated with resilience. The negative correlation between social safety nets and resilience, for instance, is because social prominence decreases as households becomes poorer. In terms of importance to rural household‟s resilience index, the result indicates that asset ownership and access to food and income play significant role followed by access to inputs and technology and access to public services. These resilience blocs show the likely that when a household experiences any form of climatic shocks, pooled out from the difficult situation and enables them to acquire resources that they did not have acquainted before. In the second component assets and stability were negative but weak, which shows that these blocs make deteriorate resilience capacity of rural farm households. The third component triggers hidden information of the resilience bloc. From all the resilience blocs under the third component, stability is strong and positive, which likely tells common story in terms of food security situations.