Unemployment and poverty are some of the major challenges facing today’s youth. As a substantial number of youth live in rural areas, agriculture becomes a significant sector that provides access to employment and food. The situation is evident in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than half of population, mainly youth -today and in the future- will continue to depend on the sector for a substantial earning. However, it is vulnerable to environmental stress factors such as climate variability.
Integrated approaches that promote interventions to increase productivity in agriculture should therefore be scaled up to reduce unemployment, poverty and exploitation of youth. These approaches should give young people a chance to contribute towards addressing this major issue affecting agriculture and the world at large.
Young people who are dependent on the sector should be involved at the community level and in the international arena. To access these structures different platforms are important in developing resources and mechanisms to enhance awareness, garner information and to ensure participation of youth in the environmental, social and sustainable development issues.
One of the most current approaches in which young people can learn of how to positively impact their agri environment is the landscapes approach: it provides a broad framework that can fully integrate agriculture and forests into a sustainable development agenda. It seeks to assess performance against broader development goals such as poverty eradication, green growth, food security and nutrition, mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, energy efficient cities, and sustainable land use and farm practices.
It is due to the need for our participation in addressing the issues affecting us that myself and my colleagues formed a multidisciplinary team of scientists and students who sought to examine vulnerability, impacts and adaptations of inland aquatic and riparian ecosystems as it relates to climate variability using two case studies on lakes in Uganda. The project was initiated due to an observed intensification of climate warming during the last three decades of 20th century with evidence from literature, which suggested climate warming has negatively affected aquatic productivity processes, fisheries and ultimately livelihoods of fishermen in Africa.
The project was aimed at determining the direction and consequences of climate warming on fishermen and their livelihoods as well as to develop and promote appropriate adaptations and/or mitigations to prepare the affected party for current and anticipated consequences of climate change.
The fishermen located at the lakes are dominated by youth at between 20-29 (27.8%) and 30-39 (37%) years, respectively with limited education and social cohesion. In addition they are dependent on fishing for their income and as a food source. They have been exposed to variations in temperature, floods, droughts and changes in water level over time which impacted their livelihoods in many ways including a reduction in catch rate, shifting species dominance, destruction of physical assets and consequently a decline in their income and fish consumption.
Regardless, several adaptation strategies and mitigation measures have been enacted upon including livelihood diversification, a shift towards emerging fishing areas and the planting of trees to support the local eco system. As a result fishermen have a more secure income and higher returns particularly from the diversification of their livelihood.
Younger fishermen are being advised to diversify to non-fishery livelihood activities to enhance their resilience, income and food security. However, adaptation and mitigation are constrained by the low adaptive capacity of the fishers characterized by limited education, capital, land, appropriate planting materials and awareness among others of which development agencies and researchers could assist in the situation.
Through field visits, radio shows and media handouts, the participants of the study are encouraged to create more awareness for up scaling the adaptation, mitigation and diversification. The young fisher folk have responded by practicing the adaptations especially diversification to higher value species and crops.
As the landscapes approach defines such an environment, it can be applied to the setting of the case study. However knowledge of its operation and benefits must be provided to the relevant communities. The case study itself has exemplified that knowledge sharing and the appropriate dissemination of information can lead to a change in the behavior of producers, particularly those who live in subsistence economies. How then can the landscapes approach be applied to such a community for the alleviation of issues such as the aforementioned due to climate change?
I challenge fellow youth to participate at all levels in addressing these challenges to agriculture in a move to produce more food needed to feed the increasing population which we dominate Personally my team and I will continue to play a role in climate research to create awareness and influencing adaptation and mitigation policy.
Our elders, leaders, custodians of leading organizations in agriculture and development agencies and other responsible stakeholders should provide us with conductive conditions especially to let our voices be heard and our actions felt. Their agenda and decisions should be focused to addressing the environmental challenges, in a similar fashion to the landscapes approach in order to address youth unemployment and poverty issues in the long run.
Blogpost based on input by: Musinguzi Laban
Edited by: Keron Bascombe of Technology4agri
Uploaded by: Dominic Kornu of Qaphui’s Café
Picture: Fishermen on Lake Victoria (Courtesy West FM
