Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Perception of Environmental Spillovers across Scale in Climate Change Adaptation Planning: The Case of Small-Scale Farmers’ Irrigation Strategies, Kenya

Version 1 : Received: 24 October 2019 / Approved: 27 October 2019 / Online: 27 October 2019 (02:54:10 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Elijah, V.T.; Odiyo, J.O. Perception of Environmental Spillovers Across Scale in Climate Change Adaptation Planning: The Case of Small-Scale Farmers’ Irrigation Strategies, Kenya. Climate 2020, 8, 3. Elijah, V.T.; Odiyo, J.O. Perception of Environmental Spillovers Across Scale in Climate Change Adaptation Planning: The Case of Small-Scale Farmers’ Irrigation Strategies, Kenya. Climate 2020, 8, 3.

Abstract

The failure to acknowledge and account for environmental externalities or spillovers in climate change adaptation policy, advocacy and programming spaces exercabates the risk of ecological degradation, more so, degradation of land. In particular use of unsuitable water sources for irrigation may increase salinisation risks. However, little if any policy assessments and research effort has been directed at investigating how farmer perceptions mediate spillovers from the ubiquitous irrigation adaptation strategy. In this study cognitive failure and/or bias construct is examined and proposed as an analytical lens in research, policy and learning and the convergence of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation discourses. The findings from small-scale farmers, Machakos and Kakamega counties, Kenya, suggest multifaceted biases and failures about the existence and importance of externalities in adaptation planning discourses. Among other dimensions, cognitive failure which encompasses fragmented approaches among institutions for use and management of resources, inadequate policy and information support, as well as, poor integration of actors in adaptation planning accounts for adaptation failure. The failures in such Human-Environment system interactions have the potential to exercabate existing vulnerability of farmer production systems in the long run. The findings further suggest that in absence of risk message information dissemination, education level, farming experience and information accumulation, as integral elements to human capital, do not seem to have significant effect on behaviour about mitigation of environmental spillovers. Implicitly, reversing the inherent adaptation failures calls for system approaches that enhance coordinated adaptation planning, prioritises proactive mitigation of slow onset disaster risks and broadens decision support systems, such as, risk information dissemination integration into the existing adaptation policy discourses and practice.

Keywords

adaptation failure; adaptation planning; economic interests; climate change; ecosystem spillovers; policy; risk perception; transformation

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Ecology

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