Capacity for research and outreach on climate change agricultural adaptation in the Faculties of Agriculture of Universities in southeast Nigeria

The study examined research and outreach capacities on climate change agricultural adaptation in the faculties of agriculture in southeast, Nigeria. One hundred and twenty (120) randomly selected academic staff of faculties of agriculture were used. Data were collected using questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive statistics. The results show poor investment in equipment (18.7%) and human capacity building (25.8%); limited department/faculty (43.3%) and university/university (28.3%) linkages for climate change research and outreach. Only 25.0% of the respondents expressed the existence of outreach and fund for climate change activities. The personal activities of staff were attendance to conference (62.5%), and involvement in researches (91.7%) on climate change. Capacities for research and outreach on climate change were constrained by several factors namely high cost of TV, radio and newspaper adverts (M = 3.44), poor understanding/knowledge of climate change concepts (M = 3.36), limited grant for climate change research (M = 3.35) and others. The study recommends that government should enact favourable policies and institutional supports that could encourage, spur and stimulate capacity acquisition activities in the universities. The university system need to internally put in place activities, strategies and programmes that could attract external aids, collaboration and raise staff interest and motivation to acquire capacity on climate change agricultural adaptation.


INTRODUCTION
Climate change is any change in climate overtime due to natural variability and human activities (anthropogenic factors) with alteration in the composition of the global atmosphere (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 2001IPCC, , 2007)).According to Organic Consumer Association (2008), the agricultural land use was responsible for approximately 15 to 20% of all anthropogenic green house gas (GHG) emissions.Thus, agriculture significantly contributes to climate change and in turn is affected by climate change.The IPCC (2007) predicted that in some African countries including Nigeria, yields from rain-fed agriculture will be reduced by up to 50% and a decrease of 30% in world food production.Moreover, between 75 and 250 million people in Africa will be exposed to water stress due to climate change and this will adversely affect livelihood in the region.This is attributed to wide range effects of climate change evidence as increase temperature, decrease rainfall in the continental interiors, drought, desert encroachment, melting ice, extreme weather, floods, sea level rise, sinking of Islands water scarcity, health and other agricultural problems (Odjugo, 2007(Odjugo, , 2009;;Adefolalu, 2007;Awake, 2008).
In Nigeria, there are increasing evidence of climate change with the attendant impacts and threats to rural communities and farmers in particular.Southeast agroecological zone of the country recorded remarkable increase in flooding, landslide and erosion which have led to loss of lives, houses, farmlands, properties, roads etc. (Agwu and Okhimamhe, 2009).Some States in the area such as Anambra and Enugu have consistently experienced sheet and gully erosion; with the worse hit areas in the Anatu-Agulu-Nanka axis, the areas around Nkisi River, Amawbia and Ozubulu areas of Anambra State.Soil productivity in many parts of the region has been badly impacted with considerable reduction in food productivity (Adesina and Odekunle, 2012).Bello et al. (2012) also observed that the area is currently confronted by irregularity in the rainfall pattern (delayed onset or early retreat of rains) leading to unsteady growing season and other soil-related problems.Thus, the challenge of building resilient society with capacity to adapt to the threats of climate change is an imperative.
Adaptation refers to adjustments in practices, processes or structures in response to projected or actual changes in climate (Ifeanyi-Obi et al., 2012), with the goal of maintaining the capacity to deal with current and future changes.
Agricultural adaptation to climate change aims at reducing and developing appropriate coping measures to address the negative impacts of climate change on crop production, soil management/conservation and animal husbandry.Adaptation and mitigation potential according to Lybbert and Sumner (2010) are nowhere more pronounced than in developing countries where agricultural productivity remains low; poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity remain high; and the direct effects of climate change are expected to be especially harsh.
Adaptation to climate change requires development of strong adaptive capacities, including provision of tools, technologies and/or information, raising awareness of adaptation options, educating society, professionals on climate change through education, research and community engagements.In other words, it calls for high climate science literacy, generation, effective diffusion and use of appropriate agricultural technologies by the public and farmers in particular.The magnitude of the challenge, particularly on the agricultural sector places universities and faculties of agriculture at the frontier of leadership in climate change adaption.In other words, through education and research, universities need to take leadership role in developing, testing and modeling solutions for meeting human needs in the face of rapid global change that threatens the viability of current systems (www.presidentclimatecommitmen.org.).In another hand, professionals and students through update to curricula need understanding of climate science, the way it affects their life and professions; and effectively contribute to building resilient community.Reports shows that as economic development drivers and infrastructure developers, as resources of expertise, student capacity and of leadership; and as advocates for specific policies at the local, state and national levels, colleges and universities have always played substantial roles in the effort to prepare communities and make them more resilient in the face of growing climate change impacts (www.presidentclimatecommitmen.org.).
They could serve as "hubs" in communities on adaptation issues, creating, testing, and disseminating knowledge about regional climate projections and adaptation strategies, and work directly with local communities to explain the science and implement solutions.Rising to the above responsibilities demand capacities at individuals, organizations and systems levels in the universities and their faculties.Ideally, such capacities should include knowledge/skills and competencies, scientific, resources (human and institutional) required to generate, innovate, and disseminate information, knowledge or technology for agricultural adaptation to climate change.
Therefore, this study aimed to assess the extent to which the requisite capacities exist in the faculties of agriculture of the universities.The objectives were to: 1) assess the research capacities on climate change agricultural adaptation in the faculties of agriculture; 2) examine the capacities for outreach on climate change agricultural adaptation and 3) determine the factors that constrained the capacities for research and outreach in the faculties of agriculture on climate change agricultural adaptation.

METHODOLOGY
The survey was conducted in southeast agro-ecological zone of Nigeria.Southeast is located between latitudes 04°17' N and 07°06' N and longitudes 05°23' E and 09°28' E (Macmillan, 2009).The area comprises the geographical location of five States namely Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi , Enugu, and Imo (Figure 1).The climate of southeast Nigeria is generally tropical with two clear identifiable seasons: the wet and dry seasons with average highest annual rainfall at 1952 mm and temperature pattern-mean daily and annual temperature at 28 and 27°C, respectively (Igbokwe et al., 2008)  technique was used to select five staff across the departments in the faculty/college of agriculture of each university.An exception was made at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, where five staff of the faculty was selected because the faculty was not yet fully departmentalized.The total sample size for the study was 130 respondents.Questionnaire was used for data collection and only 120 questionnaires were found analyzable.Capacities of universities for research on climate change adaptation were assessed by asking respondents to indicate investment/efforts that have taken place by the universities in the areas of equipment, staff training, linkages within institution, with relevant institutions and researches carried out, among others.Outreach capacities were measured in terms of its existence, methods and/or strategies adopted for outreaches and others.The respondents were asked to indicate the channels (example: use of radio programmes/jingles on climate change issues, use of television, posters, fliers, farm visits, public lectures etc) employed for climate change outreach and whether they have participated in State/National discuss on climate change.Information on constraints to research and outreach capacities of the universities were elicited using 16 possible constraint items such as inadequate fund, lack of favourable policy, poor infrastructural facilities and others.Respondents indicated the extent to which the items constrained capacities of the universities on a four point Likert-type scale of: no extent (1), little extent (2), great extent (3) and very great extent (4).Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.Mean scores ≥2.5 were considered as major constraints.Data were presented with histograms.

Capacities for research on climate change agricultural adaptation in the faculties of agriculture
The issues discussed here include: investment in equipment and human development, linkages and collaboration with institutions/agencies, and conferences attended on climate change, etc.

Investment in equipment and human development in faculties of agriculture
About 19.0% of the respondents indicated that they had invested on equipment for research on climate change adaptation in the universities (Figure 2).Personal observation and communication show that some of the investments on equipment are in the areas of library stocking, information communication technologies facilities and refurbishing of a Geographic information systems (GIS) laboratory used in accessing information in geographic systems.About 26% expressed that there  2009), better and more timely information through weather facilities could help to forecast impending weather events such as flooding, drought, early and late rain etc more effectively and thereby improve response times and adaptation.Thus, its limited availability in the faculties of agriculture suggests poor climate science capacities in the system.

Linkages for climate change research
The respondents acknowledged the existence of weak departmental and faculty (43.3%), university-university (37.5%), and lecturer-lecturer (28.3%) linkages in the universities for climate change research (Figure 2).Largely, the findings agree with Orusha et al. (2012) that academic programs in agriculture tend to exist in isolation, with little collaborations between institutions, even among those in the same geographic area.This means that innovations, research activities and programs are conducted with limited linkages/collaborations, interactions and synergy across and within institutions and disciplines.The impacts of climate change cut across sectors and discipline; thus approaches, initiatives or research activities targeted at developing adaptive capacities should be inter and/or trans-disciplinary and participatory.In other words, resources, ideas, skills among universities, departments, faculties and lecturers should be harnessed for interdisciplinary research in the whole system.Such interaction expunge knowledge flow and expunge idea fertilization across disciplines on how

Linkage with other organizations on climate change agricultural adaptation
Figure 3 shows that majority (60 and 57.5%) of the respondents indicated the existence of linkages with research institutes and Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs), respectively.Other areas of institutional linkages include: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (24.2%), farmer group (22.7%),Ministry of Agriculture (15.0%), financial institutions (0.8%), engineering firms (0.8%), donor agencies (24.2%),Ministry of Environment (1.7%), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) (0.8%) and media houses, (5.9%).Linkage particularly with research institutions and ADPs is more common probably due to interdependency in roles, functions and operations of the institutions; however, the strength, mechanisms and orientations may not be strong and effective.Generally, most linkage arrangements among institutions and agencies are dysfunctional, ad-hoc and inhibited by several economic, structural, organizational and institutional problems.However, linkage and collaboration on issues of public and global interest like climate change are crucial for evolution of multifaceted and holistic approaches to climate change adaptation needs.Though, each institution and agency has roles to perform but not in isolation.For instance, while education and research institutions are looked upon for generation/development of technologies, knowledge and skills; the ADPs, weather and environmental agencies, the media houses are critical actors in the dissemination of relevant information to the users for agricultural adaptation to climate change.Hence, World Bank (2010) recommended collaboration and communication with other agencies, bilateral/multilateral exchanges with other countries (south-south or north-south collaboration) on addressing climate variability and change.

Collaboration with agencies/organizations and supervision of climate change research
Figure 4 shows that only 5.0% of the respondents had personal collaboration with agencies and organizations on climate change issues.Twenty percent (20%) had supervised postgraduate students, while a lesser proportion (2.0%) had supervised undergraduate students on climate change research.The result reflects poor capacities and participation of the staff of faculties of   2004), allow sharing of information, learning and boosting the capacities of researchers.This is because adaptation capacity demands incorporation of multi-stakeholders including climate science experts, agricultural practitioners and technicians, local communities/civil society, donors and policy makers (Asiedu et al., 2011).

Conferences attended on climate change in the last 3 years
Majority (62.3%) of the respondents attended one conference, while about 21 and 11.3% attended 2 and 3 conferences on climate change, respectively (Figure 5).Only 3.8 and 1.9% of the respondents had attended between 4 and 5 conferences on climate change, respectively.The average number of conferences

Researches carried out on climate change in the last 3 years
A greater proportion (91.7%) of the respondents had carried out 1 to 2 researches, while 8.4% had conducted 4 or more researches on climate change in the past 3 years (Figure 6).The average number of researches carried out by the respondents was 2. The results show that a considerable number of researches have been conducted on climate change in faculties of agriculture in the universities.Interview revealed that majority the researches were conducted at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.This is not surprising because the University has organized a number of workshops on climate change and related issues.Many universities may not have had such novel opportunities and hence limited incentive and motivation for notable research efforts on climate change.rely mostly on limited external funding for a qualitative research.This is a strong disincentive and impediment to any meaningful efforts on capacity building in teaching, research, and outreach on climate change.As reported by FAO (2010), confronting the challenge of climate change creates new financing requirements in terms of both amounts and financial flows associated with needed investments, which will require innovative and institutional solutions.

Sources of funding for research on climate change
Majority (90.0%) of the respondents indicated that the universities depended on internally generated funds for research on climate change, while 10.0% indicated that funding was from grants (Figure 8).This suggests strong demonstration of commitment to research on climate change.However, dependence on internally generated fund may not be adequate and sustainable.Severally, scholars have sported out poor funding as one of the major constraints in tertiary institution (Chakaredza et al., 2008).Access and use of external/donor funds for research on climate change are necessary and cannot be over emphasized.

Area of funding on climate change adaptation
The areas of funding on climate change were library stocking with climate change text books (23.3%), research (20.8%), workshops (18.8%) and conferences (15.5%).Other areas include; symposiums (14.5%) and funding of staff travel (14.5%) for climate change-related issues (Figure 9).Many relevant activities for capacity acquisition are funded in the university, but the low responses of the respondents suggest inadequate investment and limited coverage.Climate change adaptation requires knowledge and capacity building across disciplines which requires adequate and sustainable funding.

Outreach programmes/extension on climate change
Only 25.0% of the respondents from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka indicated participation of the University in State or National discourse on climate change issues.Similarly, 25.0% of the respondents indicated the existence of outreach programme on climate change in the Faculty of Agriculture (UNN) (Table 1).Respondents revealed that the major outreach programme in the university is carried out by the 4 th year students of the Faculty of Agriculture as part of the Student Internship Work Experience Scheme (SIWES).The outreach targets creating awareness, building knowledge and capacity of the rural farmers on climate change, sustainable adaptation strategies etc.It is also accepted as means of promoting collaboration between scientists and practitioners, and enhancing local adaptation capacity including the ability to draw on climate data (Open Society Foundation, 2012).Besides, the students as well as academic staff explore the opportunity to build critical mass of capacities on climate science and to respond appropriately in their professions.
Furthermore, Table 1 shows different media of outreach to rural communities on climate change.The medium used always were posters (10.0%), radio (9.2%), fliers (2.5%), newspaper (0.8%) and newsletter (0.8%).About 36% of the respondents indicated that the university sometimes used fliers as a medium of outreach on climate change.Other media sometimes used for

Perceived constraints to capacities for research and outreach on climate change
The major constraints to capacities of the universities for research and outreach on climate change were high cost

Conclusion
Results of the study show that capacities for research and outreach on climate change adaptation in the faculties of agriculture are weak.Relatively, no substantial programmes/workshops/conference, investment, researches and outreach have been implemented or carried out in the universities.Minimal responses and commitment to the challenges of climate change adaptation is only visible in one of the universities studied.Capacities for research and outreach are constrained by several issues ranging from economic, institutional, infrastructural and personnel related factors.Given the critical roles of universities as centers of learning, research and innovation, government should enact favourable policies, mandates and institutional supports that would encourage, spur and stimulate activities in the universities on climate change adaptation.The university system should internally put in place activities, strategies and programmes or projects that could attract external aids, collaboration and raise staff interest and motivation to acquire capacities and contribute to increase awareness, knowledge, skill and technology generation for agricultural adaptation to climate change.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map of southeast Nigeria showing the study area and the selected universities.Source: Macmillian Atlas series (2009).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Investment and linkages on climate change.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Percentage distribution of respondents by linkages with institutions on climate change.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Percentage distribution of Staff by collaboration and supervision on climate change.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Percentage of respondents based on conferences attended on climate change.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Percentage distribution of respondents based on researches carried out on climate change.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Percentage distribution of respondents based on availability of fund for climate change research.

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Percentage distribution of respondents based on sources of fund for climate change research.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Percentage distribution of respondents based on activities on climate change funded

Table 1 .
Percentage distribution of respondents based on outreach/ medium of outreach and state/national discourse on climate change.

Table 2 .
Mean scores on constraints to capacity building for research and outreach on climate change.This presents a formidable challenge to the university system in positively and significantly contributing to addressing the problem of climate change.For instance, poor infrastructural base, human resource and environment could hinder teaching, research, technology generation, communication and dissemination of useful information on climate change adaptation.In turn, it could leads to poor adaptation to climate change as pointed out inOzor et.al.(2010).Also, unfavourable government policies are inhibitors to the propagation and advancement of climate science and adaptation capacities in the institutions and the public in general.Ideally, government is expected to play the roles of setting priorities, participating and enacting laws that could enhance capacity and development needed for adaptation to climate change.Furthermore, lack of fund or grant for teaching, conducting research and outreach on climate change according to Obiora (2012) incapacitates the universities in taking leadership role for climate change adaptation in the country.