German-Ethiopian SDG Graduate School CLIFOOD – Subproject: Robust adaptation strategies to climate change for Ethiopian agriculture – heterogeneity of farming households and the role of social networks

Successful strategies to cope with climatic change may vary strongly given a large heterogeneity in the farming population. The subproject will use agent-based modeling (ABM) to analyze the adaptive capacity of farming households in Central Ethiopia (Rift Valley and adjacent highlands). It will extend previous work in the working group (Berger et al. 2017) in two important aspects: 

(i) Identifying robust strategies in the face of deep uncertainty: Dealing with the combined uncertainty about future climatic, economic and political development and the uncertainty about transmitting processes that have not been fully understood (e.g. uncertainties in crop simulation), requires identifying robust adaptation options that either perform adequately under any plausible future, or allow flexible switching of strategies when new circumstances arise (Maier et al. 2016).

(ii) Explicitly incorporating the role of social capital: Networks of social relationships communicate information about hazards as well as innovation to cope with hazards (Wossen et. al. 2015). They might also provide options for collective adaptation building on existing institutions such as funeral insurance (iddirs) and micro-finance groups. Understanding of their role will, however, require to move from an aggregate social capital perspective to an explicit network perspective (McClain 2016).

This subproject is part of the CLIFOOD project which is part of the Food Security Center.