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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Clim.
Sec. Climate Adaptation
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2024.1482044

Examining Effects of Climate Information Utilization by Climate-Vulnerability Groups in the Northern Region of Ghana

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of the Gambia, Serekunda, Gambia
  • 2 Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
  • 3 Institute of Geodynamics, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania
  • 4 International Fertiliser Development Centre, Accra, Ghana
  • 5 Heidelberg Center for the Environment, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  • 6 Federal Department of Economic Affairs Education and Research (DEFR), Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 7 Department of Geography – Research Group for Earth Observation (rgeo), UNESCO Chair on Observation and Education of World Heritage & Biosphere Reserve, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany
  • 8 Department of Science Education, Faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Impacts of climate change on climate-vulnerable populations received little attention in the literature compared to the general population across the globe including Ghana's Northern Region than it has on the availability, sources, and kinds of climate services. Understanding the level of effects of utilizing climate information on farmers' livelihoods is important for climate policy evaluation. Therefore, this study investigates how farmers in three climate-vulnerable groups in Ghana's Northern Region make adaptation decisions based on climate information.Using a concurrent nested mixed research (quantitative and qualitative) approach, we collected data from 384 sampled farm household respondents, focus group discussions, and experts'(Keyinformants) opinions on climate change in the region. We analyze the data using descriptive statistics and a probit model. The results of mean statistics indicate that whereas farmers across climate-vulnerability groups perceived climate change and variability, the less climatevulnerable group utilized more climate information for adaptation 7.1 than their counterparts, 5.2 and 3.3 for moderate to high vulnerability, respectively. The probit model result reveals that farmers in the three climate-vulnerable groups are negatively associated with utilizing climate information in their adoption of adaptation strategies for floods and droughts, but they are positively and significantly influenced by climate information in their decision to implement early planting and pest/disease control. Furthermore, although the results show that using climate information boosts farmers' chances of getting credit by 102.5 %, there is no significant chance that farmers would be able to get credit without climate information. The study concludes that, to a greater extent, climate information significantly influences farmers' decisions regarding adaptation strategies in the region.

    Keywords: Climate Change, Climate vulnerability, Climate information, adaptive capacity, Northern Ghana

    Received: 17 Aug 2024; Accepted: 19 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Alhassan, Antwi-Agyei, Sima, Adzawla, Siegmund and Eze. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Iddisah Alhassan, University of the Gambia, Serekunda, Gambia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.