A comparative study of farming and fishing households' livelihood vulnerability in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Multiple stressors such as climate shocks, environmental degradation and resource conflicts may pose a great challenge for African communities struggling to adapt to climate change. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence on the differential vulnerabilities of farming and fishing households to these triple stressors. Using a household survey in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, we compare the vulnerability of farming and fishing households. We find that the farming households were more exposed to the triple stressors while the fishing households were more sensitive to the triple stressors owing to their poor physical and natural asset base. In addition, we find that the two groups share similar adaptive capacity and composite vulnerability scores. Overall, interventions such as credit schemes can enable fishing households to address their livelihood disruptions and build their asset endowment, and climate-responsive interventions such as early warning systems can partly reduce the climate exposure of farming households.