Farmers’ perceptions of severe climate risks and adaptation interventions in indigenous communities in northern Ghana

Perceptions of climate change are widely studied and documented. However, understandings of conceptions and experiences of severe climate risks in indigenous farming communities are insufficient. This research respond to that knowledge gap with evidence from selected indigenous farming communities in northern Ghana through a mixed-method approach. Results from the empirical data show that farmers perceive severe climate risk to mean livelihood disruption throughout the season, unproductive farmlands, ineffective adaptation and inability to break even. The logistic regression estimates show that gender, marital status, livelihood activity and ecological zone are all influential factors that are likely to predict farmers’ perceptions of severe climate risk. Farmers in northern Ghana experience severe physical climate risks such as extreme droughts, extreme temperatures, severe heatwaves, frequent floods and severe water stress. To mitigate severe physical climate risks and disasters, individual farmers implement indigenous adaptation strategies such as livelihood diversification, construction of hand-dug wells in farms, migration, building of mounds or ridges, and early marriage of young girls. Collectively, farming communities culturally utilize animal sacrifices and spiritual incantations to invoke rains to address prolonged droughts. Understanding severe climate risks and their determinants will provide good policy guidelines for early warning systems to sustainably improve livelihood and food security in resource-constrained communities.