The Role of Cooperatives in Climate Change Adaptation: Panel Evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change is likely to threaten the livelihood of millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. This paper investigates whether cooperatives could play a role in promoting climate adaptation among their members and, through spillover-effects on non-members in their villages, among their communities at large. For this purpose, we use panel data collected among smallholder farm households in Ethiopia. We find that (i) cooperative membership increases the number of adaptation practices adopted by farm households; (ii) this effect increases with the number of cooperatives of which farm households are members, and (iii) non-members in villages with cooperatives adopt more adaptation practices than farm households in villages without cooperatives, although results are statistically significant only for certain types of cooperatives. These results suggest that considering different levels at which climate change adaptation takes place should receive greater attention among researchers and policymakers. For example, enhancing the institutional capacity of and creating partnerships with cooperatives could facilitate the implementation of climate change adaptation policies and strategies, including at the farm level.

Keywords: Farmer organizations, cooperatives, climate change adaptation, climate-smart agriculture, spillover effects