Journal of Co-operative and Business Studies (JCBS)
This paper assessed climate change future effects and determined the perception of sustainability of
adaptive capacity resources among smallholder farmers in Manyoni District, Tanzania. The paper
adopted a cross-sectional study design. A multistage sampling was used to select four wards randomly
from which two villages were randomly selected in each ward to make a total of eight villages. Using
simple random sampling guided by lottery method, 30 respondents were selected from each village. The
specific objectives were to identify the future climate change effects; to determine the perceived
sustainability of adaptive capacity resources and to analyse the weights of perceived sustainability
resources. Data collection was done through a household questionnaire survey, focus group discussion
and key informant interviews. Descriptive analysis was used for analysis using SPSS. Kruskal-Wallis Test
was performed to test the perception of adaptive capacity resources in relation to age. It was found that
the expected future effects are: fall of grain production, acute water shortage, washing away of fertile
soil, reduced motivation to cultivating, increased food insecurity and soil erosion. Furthermore, 60.4% of
the smallholder farmers were found to have low perception on the sustainability of adaptive capacity
resources. Based on the findings the study concludes that climate change will pose more serious effects in
the future as indicated by the majority who perceive sustainability of their adaptive capacity resources to
be low being more worried of these effects. Furthermore, the study concludes that, the critical adaptive
capacity resources are governance and human capital. The study recommends that smallholder farmers
in collaboration with the District Agricultural Department devise proactive measures to address the
anticipated effects. Similarly, smallholder farmers and the local government should set plans to
strengthen a more sustainable access to and use of adaptive capacity resources.