Does Awareness Through Learning About Climate Change Enhance Farmers’ Perception of and Adaptation to Climate Uncertainty?

Finding out ways to support farmers’ decision to adapt to climate change is a challenge for agricultural policy. Hypothesizing that awareness through learning about climate change enhances farmers’ perception of and adaptation to climatic uncertainty, this paper gives an empirical evidence of the relationships between learning about climate change and farmers’ perception of, and adaptation to new climate conditions. The study was conducted in northern Benin by a survey method on 336 farmers. Talking about climate change, farmers mainly perceive it based on observed changes in their daily life environment, implying from own experience. About 56 % of the farmers were also aware through learning about climate change and the most predominant vectors of climate change information (although indigenous knowledge) are neighbour farmers or farmers associations and extension services. Using the Heckman probit model built on the assumption that the perception of is a precondition for the adaptation to, the results highlighted that the main driving forces of farmers’ decision to adapt to climate change are level of education and organisation membership. On the other hand, the main determinants of farmers’ perception are gender, contact with extension and awareness of climate change trends. Subsequently, enhancing farmers’ awareness through learning about the predicted trends of climate change is likely to strengthen their perception of and furthermore encourage their adaptation to.