Using gridded daily temperature and rainfall data covering 30 years (1988–2017), this study investigates trends in rainfall, temperature, and extreme events in three agro-ecological settings in central Ethiopia. The Mann Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were used to examine the trends and slope of changes in climate indices. The profile of farmers whose perception converges with or diverges from meteorological data was characterized using polling. The average annual temperature has increased by 0.4 and 0.3 °C per decade in the lowland and midland areas, respectively. Average annual rainfall has increased only in the midland areas by 178 mm per decade. Farmers’ perception of increasing temperature fairly aligns with meteorological data. However, there is a noticeable difference between farmers’ perception of rainfall and meteorological data. The perception of farmers with poor economic status, access to media, and higher social capital aligns with measured trends. Conversely, the perception of economically better-off and uneducated farmers diverges from meteorological data. Accurate perception is constrained by the failure of the traditional forecast methods to describe complex weather variabilities and lack of access to down-scaled weather information. The findings highlight the importance of availing specific and agro-ecologically relevant weather forecasts to overcome perceptual problems and to support effective adaptation.

There is a dearth of evidence on the socio-cultural aspects of climate change risk perception in developing countries. This study investigates the variation in farmers’ perception of the risks of climate change and variability by their socio-cultural characteristics. Data were collected from 810 randomly selected households in central Ethiopia using a structured questionnaire. Polling, a maximum likelihood prediction method of multivariate analysis that jointly evaluates the combined roles of different variables, allowing for non-parametric interactions, was used to analyse the data. The results show that households with a high risk perception have high accurate knowledge about climate change, experience of climatic events, value both societal and individual responsibilities to reduce the impact of climate change, and reside in the midland agro-ecological settings. On the other hand, a low descriptive norm, low social capital, lack of access to media, low level of education, and valuing autonomy characterize households with a low risk perception. The findings entail that communication strategies focusing on evidence-based knowledge about causes and consequences of and responses to climate change, past experience of climatic events, as well as fostering self-transcendence and openness-to-change values raise risk perception to engage farmers in adaptation actions.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the highest maternal mortality ratio estimated at 846 deaths per 100,000 live births. Innovative strategies such as social accountability are needed to improve both health service delivery and utilization. Indeed, social accountability is a form of citizen engagement defined as the ‘extent and capability of citizens to hold politicians, policy makers and providers accountable and make them responsive to their needs.’ This study explores existing social accountability mechanisms through which women’s concerns are expressed and responded to by health providers in local settings. An exploratory study was conducted in two health zones with purposively sampled respondents including twenty-five women, five men, five health providers, two health zone officers and eleven community stakeholders. Data on women’s voice and oversight and health providers’ responsiveness were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. In the two health zones, women rarely voiced their concerns and expectations about health services. This reluctance was due to: the absence of procedures to express them, to the lack of knowledge thereof, fear of reprisals, of being misunderstood as well as factors such as age-related power, ethnicity backgrounds, and women’s status. The means most often mentioned by women for expressing their concerns were as individuals rather than as a collective. They did not use them instead; instead they looked to intermediaries, mostly, trusted health providers, community health workers and local leaders. Their perceptions of health providers’ responsiveness varied. For women, there were no mechanisms for oversight in place. Individual discontent with malpractice was not shown to health providers. In contrast, health providers mentioned community health workers, health committee, and community based organizations as formal oversight mechanisms. All respondents recognized the lack of coalition around maternal health despite the many local associations and groups. Social accountability is relatively inexistent in the maternal health services in the two health zones. For social accountability to be promoted, efforts need to be made to create its mechanisms and to open the local context settings to dialogue, which appears structurally absent.

Social accountability mechanisms have been highlighted as making a contribution to improving maternal health outcomes and reducing inequities. But there is a lack of evidence on how they contribute to such improvements. This study aims to explore social accountability mechanisms in selected districts of the Indian state of Gujarat in relation to maternal health, the factors they address and how the results of these mechanisms are perceived. We conducted qualitative research through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with actors of civil society and government health system. Data were analyzed using a framework of social determinants of maternal health in terms of structural and intermediary determinants. There are social accountability mechanisms in the government and civil society in terms of structure and activities. But those that were perceived to influence maternal health were mainly from civil society, particularly women’s groups, community monitoring and a maternal death review. The social accountability mechanisms influenced structural determinants – governance, policy, health beliefs, women’s status, and intermediary determinants – social capital, maternal healthcare behavior, and availability, accessibility and the quality of the health service delivery system. These further positively influenced the increased use of maternal health services. The social accountability mechanisms, through the process of information, dialogue and negotiation, particularly empowered women to make collective demands of the health system and brought about changed perceptions of women among actors in the system. It ultimately improved relations between women and the health system in terms of trust and collaboration, and generated appropriate responses from the health system to meeting women’s groups’ demands. Social accountability mechanisms in Gujarat were perceived to improve interaction between communities and the health system and contribute to improvements in access to and use of maternal health services. The influence of social accountability appeared to be limited to the local/district level and there was lack of capacity and ownership of the government structures.

Although most micro-level studies show the positive impact of adaptation on food security and household income, these are only a few of the outcomes adaptation is intended to achieve. Farmers’ livelihoods function in complex ways such that an understanding the multidimensional outcome of adaptation is important. These necessitate the use of multiple indicators in the evaluation of the impact of adaptation. Based on data collected from 810 randomly selected households in central Ethiopia, this study investigates the impacts of adaptation strategies on the sustainability of the livelihoods of farmers. The economic, social, and environmental outcomes were integrated to construct the Livelihood Sustainability Index. The endogenous switching regression model, which accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and possible endogeneity, was used to examine the impact of using adaptation strategies. With a mean score of 41, the farmers had lower levels of livelihood sustainability. Farmers switching crop type, diversifying crops, planting improved seeds, engaging in land management activities, and using irrigation had a higher livelihood sustainability index compared to the counterfactual case in which they did not use them. Non-farm employment and migration significantly increased livelihood sustainability for the using households. However, had these factors been used by the non-users, it would have resulted in reduced livelihood sustainability. Farmers using more than four adaptation strategies had more sustainable livelihoods than using fewer strategies. The findings affirm that adaptation contributes to livelihood improvement. However, since the farmers are far from achieving a higher level of sustainable livelihoods, policies shall focus on maximizing the returns to be obtained from using adaptation strategies. This includes improving access to ecosystem services through environmental protection measures, increasing production efficiency through improved access to and proper utilization of farm inputs, expanding irrigation facilities, creating decent employment opportunities, and enhancing farmers’ skills through entrepreneurial training.