**9. Potential trajectories to improve adaptation and mitigation strategies**

The current situation shows that despite having numerous strategies, practices, and programs to address climate change impacts, the level of vulnerability is still high in most developing countries [51]. This is because there are other factors that affect negatively the efforts of increasing resilience to climate impacts. Therefore, to improve adaptation to climate impacts, we need to have a clear exploration of what we have been doing for couple of time. In most Eastern African countries, the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) was adopted in the 2000s [31]. NAPA reviewed the level of vulnerability of economic, social, and ecological factors, among others, to climate change. Thus, it is better to review the NAPA if it still captures the most current challenges. If not, we need to revise it and mainstream the new important aspects in plans, programs, and policies. This will serve the widest audience of victims in the region, more particularly the small-holder farmers.

Again, the study on local condition should be done to explore the actual climate impacts that emanate in the locality. It was found that there have been intravariations of climate variables within the local condition [12]. This now necessitates the follow-up from that level and progresses onward. However, this should be accompanied by authentic meteorological stations installed in villages. This will be the source of climate data and information.

Besides, various international and local reports have realized that since rain-fed agriculture is not reliable, there is a need to develop irrigation systems from groundwater and rainfall harvest sources [1]. In semiarid zones such as Central Tanzania and Northeastern Kenya and Uganda, intensive transformation to serve the livelihoods in these areas is needed. It will improve the agricultural systems for food crops and animal husbandry. This is because, currently, there has been a massive crop failure and death of a huge number of animals.

The improvement of agricultural systems needs to be given high priority in the region. This is because most poor agricultural systems have significant contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases. This is influenced by limited knowledge and technology to overcome the environmental changes that have been progressing over time. The implementation of various plans, projects, and programs needs to have effectiveness to the majority and not business as usual. This involves the best addressing of the climate challenge to the targeted group. Despite the increasing number of needy people, however, there is still a possibility to advance the methods of solving the challenges as related to the magnitude of the problem. This will bring more positive results to the social, economic, and ecological development to the majority.

## **10. Conclusions and potential policy implications**

In this review, we assess and estimate the causes, vulnerability, impact, and adaptation strategies of climate change on the livelihoods in Eastern Africa. This was to respond the call for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC regarding

*Rainfall - Extremes, Distribution and Properties*

severely affected with their herds [14].

**8. Existing adaptation strategies**

resources even though this has been done with little success.

Although the impact of climate change can affect both the managed and unmanaged ecosystems and the livelihood of the majority, it rather hits most the vulnerable people as soundly stipulated in Section 4 of this paper. Livestock keepers lack optional livelihoods when thousands of their cattle die due to extreme drought [16, 18]. In due course, the climate affects livestock in a number of ways; an increase in heat affects the health of animals and reduces their food intake. The situation also affects the dairy and meat and production as a result from impacts on grass and rangeland [40]. Apart from that, the situation deprives animals from access to plenty of water due to drought [40, 41]. However, pastoralist with some financial muscles shift from one place to another using transport systems while those with weak economy were

For instance, since 2000, Tanzania has experienced massive movements of pastoral communities (especially the Maasai) with their herds in thousands. In most cases the movement has been from areas with low potentials, e.g., semiarid, to high-potential zones, e.g., in floodplains [31], in search for pastures and water. This has been an adaptation strategy of these societies to get rid from extreme droughts. However, this has not been a sustainable option since they have further been degrading the area of destination and, thus, limiting more livelihood options and increasing poverty [28, 41]. IPCC reports have already specified that poor people with less socioeconomic instruments have been the most victims of climate impacts [1, 2]. The study by Agrawala et al. [29] that was conducted in Tanzania had similar observations. This, therefore, shows the degree of magnitudes of climate impacts to vulnerable livelihoods. Despite the direct impacts of climate to various livelihoods and ecosystems, there is a wide range of indirect impacts that also hits the same ecosystems and living organisms. And this poses accumulative impacts to the same.

According to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, adaptation and mitigation are very important practices for the sustainability of the planet. Despite the fact that these two practices are credible in both developed and developing countries, IPCC reports [1–3] have affirmed that developing countries, especially the sub-Saharan Africa, need to devote more time and resources to significantly embody these practices into all sectors that determine the peoples' livelihoods. Eastern Africa is among the regions with rapid population increase (growth rate 3%); thus, the demands of food and other environmental resources are increasing rapidly [42]. So far, if the increasing food demand due to human population growth is not well curbed, more degradation or the misuse of environmental assets and natural resources can be enormous. This situation has progressively compelled the region to adapt and cope with the changing climate to meet the necessary environmental

Various studies such as Alqudah et al. [43], Burney and Naylor [44], Cole [45],

The increment adaptation has been the most important aspect as many people remain in agricultural production as their major livelihoods. These adaptations

Eriksen et al. [46], Kilembe et al. [47], Lobell and Gourdji [48], and Rickards and Howden [49] have observed that the existing adaptation practices in Eastern Africa have widely been incremental, or transformational and have been basing on the severity of the climate impacts. Incremental adaptation refers to the fine-tuning of the existing system to minimize impacts, which includes changing planting dates, crop varieties, plant density, and nutrient and water management practices, while transformational involves the opting of alternative income

**42**

generation methods [49, 50].

climate change in developing countries to curb the dominant greenhouse gases for the sustainability of the planet. Our main contribution is to indicate the level of climate impacts by giving evidences from various robust and scientific researches that have been done in favor of the scope of the present study.

Here we find that a wide range of anthropogenic activities in most developing countries involve deforestation, degradation, and pollution of the environment and, thus, emit tons of greenhouse gases (i.e., CO2, CH4, N2O, and CFCs) into the atmosphere. This is the claim of various climate stakeholders especially in international conferences (i.e., COP). Despite being less polluters than their counterpart, i.e., developed countries, the developing countries need to improve and stabilize their adaptation and mitigation measures because they suffer the most and are least equipped to cope. The variation of mean season temperature and precipitation within growing season has had a significant impact to agricultural production in the region. This in turn poses more vulnerability to farmers especially the poor, thus depriving the tool to either heal or cope with the dreadful condition.

Our estimation results appear to be economically viable, environmentally friendly, and communality acceptable as they consider the actual situation of the majority farmers and their socioeconomic dynamics. In addition, they can help to plan, prepare, and implement sound climate policies in the regions and/or international level. This will help in attributing farmer responses to climate variability with respect to socioeconomic and ecological circumstances.

The study has also viewed that there is substantial potential adaptation and mitigating measures of climate change which possibly can even increase agricultural output through conventional technologies such as flexible planting and rainwater harvesting, conservational agriculture (i.e., agroforestry), afforestation, and sustainable utilization of the Earth's resources. It also realized the need to improve forecasting methods at relevant scales for understanding ecosystem response and translating forecasts into useful decision support for natural resource managers and farmers. Therefore, there is a need to document all sound adaptation and mitigation measures that have proved to be helpful in the region. This should go with good governance in the region as some countries have political stiffness due to allegation of being dictatorial regimes.

Practically, adaptation strategies should be significantly mainstreamed into the country's planning frameworks, but how? By conducting vulnerability assessments for critical sectors to enhance understanding of the potential impacts of climate change. Developing a national climate change strategy that clearly lays out priority sector and ecosystem vulnerabilities and means for addressing them. Overall, this will improve the resilience of the people in developing countries and make the planet free from excessive concentration of greenhouse gases that are increasingly disturbing the destiny of the planet.

**45**

**Author details**

Msafiri Yusuph Mkonda

*A Novel Assessment of the Impacts, Vulnerability, and Adaptation of Climate Change in Eastern…*

Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Solomon Mahlangu College of Science and Education, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*Address all correspondence to: msamkonda81@yahoo.co.uk

provided the original work is properly cited.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86850*

## **Conflict of interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

*A Novel Assessment of the Impacts, Vulnerability, and Adaptation of Climate Change in Eastern… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86850*
