**5. Findings and discussion**

#### **5.1 Demographic profile of respondents**

The survey results showed that the level of education among respondents (household heads) was relatively low, as almost 36% of the respondents had no formal education at all, while only 11% completed secondary education. Subsequently, it came as no surprise that only 41.8% of the respondents – dropping to as low as 23.3% in the case of Mfangano Island – had any awareness of climate change. The low level of formal education clearly impacted negatively on the perceptions and general knowledge of the respondents about climate change. More importantly, as pointed out in previous studies [1, 5, 10], such a lack of knowledge of climate change may affect the adaptation capabilities of the respondents through a lack of preparedness. This is supported by other studies that postulated the correlation between the level of literacy and the adaptive capacity of communities to climate change [21, 37, 38].

The most important asset for rural livelihoods in the study area was natural capital, namely access to land, livestock, and the fishing opportunities of Lake Victoria. The

#### *Climate Change, Rural Livelihoods, and Human Well-Being: Experiences from Kenya DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104965*

natural capital of the study area was supplemented by physical capital in the form of human-made necessities, such as shelter, boats, and fishing nets. Almost two in every three households (63.6%) had access to land and most owned that land privately. Approximately 33% of the respondents had farming as a source of livelihood, 41% solely relied on fishing, and 26% relied on both farming and fishing for survival. A lack of diversification into other income-generating opportunities made the community more vulnerable to droughts or floods that destroyed their crop production or reduced their fish catches – a situation that was no doubt aggravated by the low level of human capital. This further resulted in over-reliance on food aid during climate disaster periods.

#### **5.2 Farmers' and fishermen's perceptions of climate change**

Respondents in all three villages confirmed that they observed changes in climate over the five years preceding the interviews. The population might not be aware of the specific detail pertaining to climate change phenomena, but based on their traditional knowledge, they had noticed changes in climate patterns. Almost 85% of farmers and fishermen in the study area confirmed that they had experienced a significant increase in temperature, 43.3% experienced a decrease in rainfall, 83.3% reported changes in either the start or end of the rainy season, 30% reported an increase in floods, while 11.7% observed a decrease in the water of Lake Victoria.

These observations broadly correlate with official records of changing weather patterns in Kenya since the 1990s [6]. A further comparison of the respondents' observations with an analysis of climate changes in Kenya for the period 1977–2014 confirmed a decrease in rainfall as well as a rise in temperature for this period [39]. Moreover, from 1960 to 2014 the average temperature has increased in all 21 arid and semi-arid regions for which the trends were analyzed [39]. In the same study, most pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya confirmed that they experienced much lower rainfall alongside a high frequency of unpredictable rains and rising temperatures during this period. These trends are confirmed by The World Bank Group [40] who also found that Kenya has experienced rising temperatures over large parts of the country since the early 1960s. Since 1960, the annual mean temperature increase has been put at 1°C, while the average rate per decade has been estimated at 0.21°C. Further confirmation of rising temperatures was found in another study that tested for variability and trends in temperature in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania for the period 1979–2010 [41]. The findings of that study pointed to consistent increases in extreme temperatures in these countries for the four decades under analysis – a trend that correlates with increases in global mean temperature. Most of the extreme temperatures that occurred since 2000 were also higher than the mean temperature for the long-term period 1979–2010 [41]. At the same, however, no statistically significant correlations were observed for trends in rainfall since 1960 [40]. A study of trends and variability in precipitation in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia), too could not find any general pattern in rainfall for the period 1981–2016, as rainfall indices showed both increasing and decreasing trends in all three countries during the period under study [41].

Excessively heavy downpours caused floods and in some instances crop failure and hazardous conditions for fishermen in Lake Victoria's open waters. From these findings, it is evident that climate variability is increasing in the Suba district. Farmer and fishermen respondents in all the villages perceived these changes in climate patterns as natural phenomena, rather than seeking the causes in anthropogenic factors. This

lack of an informed, holistic understanding of the interface between the causes of climate change and the imminent threats that it poses to their livelihoods – a function of the poor human capital in the Suba district – inevitably hampers the ability of the respondents to adjust in a more strategic and coherent way to their environment and its changing ecosystems.

#### **5.3 Impacts of climate change on farmers and fishermen**

Extreme climatic conditions, combined with other external factors, significantly contributed to low productivity for farmers and fishermen. The survey results indicated an increase in food insecurity resulting from reduced crop yields, low fish catches, reduced livestock, and a decrease in general food availability in the study area. Almost half of the respondents (49.4%) mentioned sensitivity – a change in crop yields in response to a change in the mean and variability of temperature, 73.7% observed increased livestock mortality and 80.6% reported reduced food availability. Famers stated that reduced crop yields resulted in high poverty levels as their sources of livelihood were now vulnerable to climate disasters.

Fishermen in all three villages indicated a slight decrease in fish catches, resulting in increased food insecurity. A substantial proportion of fishermen in all three villages (59.4%) further observed reduced species diversity in their catches. Several other factors that were fuelled by climate variability, such as the increased risk of fishing in Lake Victoria due to violent storms and floods (62.3% of respondents), had significantly reduced fish catches. As a result, one-third of all the fishermen respondents (33.1%) reported a decline in their households' annual net income.

#### **5.4 Reduced human health**

Adverse effects of climate change have resulted in an increase in communicable diseases that impacts human health. The target population mainly depended on unprotected water sources for domestic uses, thereby resulting in a surge of diarrheal diseases, cholera, and typhoid. Even though it was not directly investigated in the sampled population, such a lack of secure water sources may result in the surge of water-borne diseases in incidences of high rainfall and flooding.

A decrease in the availability of water for domestic purposes means that women had to travel longer distances to community boreholes – on average two to three kilometers per day – to fetch water. Few households had access to protected water sources and thereby resorted to unclean water sources. These findings are consistent with the prediction that water stress is estimated to increase due to climate change factors [42]. Such unprotected and unclean water was sourced from rivers, dams, ponds canals, and wells that are all liable to contamination by the disposal of both domestic and any other environmental waste. Water-borne diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, increase where there are no clean protected water sources [1, 5, 8, 43]. The respondents in the study area relied on using chlorine pills and boiling in some instances to treat their water for drinking. However, such methods were not always available to all as there were periods when communities struggle to access the chlorine pills.

#### **5.5 Climate change adaptation and coping strategies of the respondents**

Social capital in the form of informal networks within the three villages of Mbita point, Mfangano Island, and Rusinga Island were central to the everyday survival

#### *Climate Change, Rural Livelihoods, and Human Well-Being: Experiences from Kenya DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104965*

of the communities. Bonded ties and reciprocal relationships between friends and families enable the exchange of services and goods. The findings suggest that these informal institutions tend to be exclusive and are defined by kinship and neighborhoods. Such reciprocal links include the sharing of capital assets, information, cash loans, emotional support, food, and labor. For example, fishermen on Rusinga Island form groups for collective fishing using their physical capital in the form of cooperative assets, such as boats and nets. Maintaining these links with friends and families in the community offers households the opportunity to adapt or recover from climate disasters and helps them to buffer shocks.

Local communities also learned to adapt to the naturally changing environment by using their local and traditional knowledge to recognize and cope with these changes. It has been proven in several studies that indigenous knowledge of the environment helps local communities to respond actively to the challenges posed by climate variability [44–46]. The traditional climate prediction practices of using animal behavior patterns, moon characteristics, and tree phenology are still practiced in the study area. Even though the efficiency of some of the methods is debatable, these traditional practices have enabled the community to cope with climate variability to a certain extent. The use of indigenous knowledge and traditional warning systems to monitor weather changes is, however, being compromised as climate change is bringing more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. Low mastery of this traditional knowledge by the younger community members further erodes its value in the community.

Respondents from fishing households tend to use traditional curing methods of preservation to enable their fish catches to last longer. This is because modern preservation techniques, such as ice, are expensive and inaccessible to them. Fishermen tend to smoke, oil fry, or salt-dry their fish for it to last longer in their food storage. These traditional methods of preservation can be effective in preserving fish catches for a certain period, thereby providing food and a source of income through market trade-in disaster periods [47].

Survey results also indicated that most respondents (71.3% of all households) relied heavily on food aid distributed by humanitarian aid agencies as a means of coping with droughts and floods. Monthly government handouts of maize, rice, and cooking oil also had buffered the population from hunger during droughts and floods. Furthermore, to address famine in the community, the Kenyan government had resorted to hand out cash for people who had been severely affected by droughts and floods [48].

Other coping mechanisms included borrowing money from other households, borrowing food on credit, and curtailing expenses on other things that were deemed as not basic, such as clothing and luxuries. For the farming households, the integrated crop-livestock system enabled the people to minimize the effects of droughts. In bad seasons, livestock was sometimes sold to cushion families against droughts and floods. Farmers also employed conservation farming practices, such as rainwater harvesting and crop diversification. Other, more resilient, crops such as sorghum, cowpeas, and groundnuts had been grown to buffer against climate shocks. Under periods of moderate drought stress, all these practices have helped to maintain crop productivity.
