Smallholder farmers dependent on rain-fed agriculture are particularly vulnerable to extremeclimate events and, therefore, it is necessary to identify adaptive measures thatwould increase farmer resilience to these shocks. Themanagement options in a low-input system, like forest coffee (Coffea arabica), arelimited and there are several factors out of farmers' control driving their vulnerability to changing climatic conditions. These can relate to social structures and landscape factors, which can interact to reduce farmers' adaptive capacity, creating a state of contextual vulnerability. We explored the potential synergies of this interaction across elevation, patch area and shade management gradients for smallholder coffee farms around theUNESCOYayu Coffee Forest BiosphereReserve in Ethiopia before, during and immediately following the 2015/16 El Nino. We documented a dramatic collapse in coffee yields across all farms, resulting in coffee incomes 29.5% +/- 18.0% and 19.5% +/- 10.0% of 2014 incomes in 2015 and 2016, respectively. We identified farms at elevations between 1500 and 1600mwith canopy openness between 40% and 45% as being consistently lowyielding over our study period. We found these farmers had the highest rates of income diversification and, therefore, were already exhibiting adaptive capacity. Farmerswith the largest income losses were spatially concentrated between 1600 and 1700m, located in larger patch areas with lower canopy openness. Farmers at this elevation have access to poor infrastructure, restrictions on shademanagement and reported higher dependence on incomefromcoffee, indicating an interaction of biotic and social factors exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, due to a nationally declared state of emergency, wewere unable to survey farmers on the adaptivemeasures they undertook; therefore, we are limited in assessing their resilience. However, we do show the importance of considering both biotically and socially-mediated influences for assessing smallholder vulnerability, particularly barriers to diversifying incomes.
1.Zool Soc London, Inst Zool, London, England 2.Univ Oxford, Sch Geog & Environm, ECI, Oxford, England 3.Environm Climate Change & Coffee Forest Forum EC, Gambela, Ethiopia 4.Univ British Columbia, Inst Resources Environm & Sustainabil, Vancouver, BC, Canada 5.Univ Oxford, Dept Zool, Oxford, England 6.Nat Conservat Res Ctr, Accra, Ghana 7.Lund Univ, Ctr Sustainabil Studies, LUCSUS, Lund, Sweden 8.Univ Reading, Sch Agr Policy & Dev, Reading, Berks, England
Recommended Citation:
Morel, Alexandra C.,Hirons, Mark,Demissie, Sheleme,et al. The structures underpinning vulnerability: examining landscape-society interactions in a smallholder coffee agroforestry system[J]. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS,2019-01-01,14(7)