Overlooked climate change impacts in African mountain

Mountain regions are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, but we know little about climate change impacts and farmers’ adaptation responses in African mountains. We interviewed 1,500 farmers across ten mountains in eight countries, to investigate not only perceived climate change impacts, but also adaptation responses and their constraints to adaptation.

We found that farmers in all sites perceive multiple impacts, and that they mostly respond by intensifying farming practices and using off-farm labour, with some key differences across sites. While several constraints were shared across sites, others were context specific. We discuss why adaptation is mostly incremental and how we can help local farmers towards more transformational changes.