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Vulnerability Assessment of Northern Ghana to Climate Variability

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Low literacy levels by default means people are excluded from high paid job because they lack the skills and competence. In the rural communities, the lack of knowledge greatly limits farmers’ capacity to access information as well as the use of new technology (Rakodi 1999). The majority of people are smallholder farmers with low agricultural income which is insufficient to purchase efficient farm implement, viable seeds, fertilizers, build storage facilities, nor invest in rainfed agriculture.The limited assets and entitlements exposes communities to further risk and reduces their ability to cope to the impact of climate variability. The results support the findings of Antwi-Agyei et al. (2012) study of the ten regions of Ghana using different indicators which showed the three regions in northern Ghana as most vulnerable to drought.

With limited livelihood diversification in the regions, many rural household have embraced migration as an adaptive strategy to cope with the impact of harsh climatic conditions such as drought and floods. Permanent and temporary migrations from rural north to urban south are becoming important livelihood strategies, often viewed as a pathway out of poverty and to improve household income sources and individual well-being (Assan and Obeng 2009). Van der Geest (2010) argued that remittances from rural–urban migrants currently contribute much more to rural household income than incomes from agriculture in sheer size and importance, as persistent
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