CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Background
According to Scholze et al. (2006), adverse effect of climate change and variability has become environmental and socio-economic pest which is increasingly causing harm to people around the world. This assertion was also supported by Zhu & Zhou (2010) suggesting that climate change is now one of the main environmental problem which is threatening the survival and the development of human beings.
According to Scholze et al. (2006), climate change serves as a serious inhibitor to the attainment of food security and also to the fulfillment of major developmental agenda in majority of the global economies of which Ghana cannot be exempted. It has attracted the attention of the academic community, governmental and non-governmental organizations.
IPCC (2014) posits that climate change is any change in climate over a period of time which comes about as a result of both human activity and natural variability. Montle & Teweldemedhin (2014) noted that negative impact of climate change is projected to be experienced considerably by poor people who depend on semi-subsistence agriculture for their existence. The reason can be found Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) (2011), which reports that higher a proportion of the rural households are limited by the essential ability to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. This is due to the fact that policy response is inadequate, institutional arrangements are very feeble, and interventions are not based on the needs of the households. Minia (2004) predicted that the total annual rainfall will decline by 9-27%
whiles the mean daily temperatures will rise by 2.5 – 3.2 in the whole universe by the year 2100.
The latest report by the IPCC, indicates that the adverse effects of global warming are already being experienced in every continent on the globe. However, few countries are prepared for the risk that the change conveys (IPCC, 2014). Boko et al. (2007) reports that agricultural production as well as food security in many African regions and countries have the highest probability to be severely compromised by climate change and variability. Orindi & Murray (2005) also noted that negative impact of climate change has been observed in Africa where it has directly affected climate-dependent activities such as agriculture and indirectly impacted on social aspects such as health, education, conflict and poverty.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), Africa has already experienced worsening food production which has frustrated the efforts to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing hunger by half by 2015.
According to Parry (2007), poor and excessive precipitation has reduced global food crop production by 30%. This has led to an increment in food insecure households from 160 million in 1996 to over a 200 million in the 2000s. According to the World Bank (2008), climate variability and change has been experienced in Ghana with three major physical impacts observed, namely changes in rainfall and temperature as well as rise in sea level.
