Climate change awareness, environmental education and gender role burdens among rural farmers of Northern Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of climate change awareness among the rural farmers of Northern Cross River state, investigate the gender role analyzes of some daily routine activities carried out by these rural farmers, ascertain the difference in workload burden of the impacts of climate change between men and women, identify the strategies adopted by these rural farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change in their agricultural activities and investigate the roles Environmental Education (EE) can play in helping the rural farmers to design and adopt sustainable adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce or completely eradicate their vulnerability to climate change effects. Design/methodology/approach The research design adopted for this study is the cross-sectional survey method. Five research questions guided the study. Two sets of instruments were used for data collection, a sample of 1,258 respondents (0.1%) were selected for the study. The researchers personally administered the instruments and collected the same back, two instruments were not properly filled, so they were rejected. Findings The finding of the study revealed that rural farmers have some level of climate change awareness, which they got from radio, newspapers, awareness campaigns, flyers, billboards, among others. Six out of the nine strategies listed were adopted by the rural farmers to mitigate climate change effects among these rural farmers. There is a significant difference in gender workload burden between women and male in the area, the result is positively skewed toward women, implying that the burden of workload for women increased over those of men. The result also shows that EE can influence their attitude toward climate change through awareness creation, knowledge provisions and also encourage members participation in climate change effect mitigation, prevention and adaptation. Research limitations/implications With this result, EE can be used as a tool for the creation of knowledge, awareness, attitude and encourage the participation of these rural farmers toward mitigating and prevention climate change effects among these rural farmers. It was recommended among others that deliberate policies should be designed to make EE help create the needed awareness on climate change, beginning from the causes, effects and mitigation strategies among rural farmers in their community. Practical implications Already, most Environmental Educators have been trained, the government should design and formulate practical policies to use them as extension agent on climate change effort to go to these rural communities and create the needed awareness, knowledge, skills and attitude to help them combat climate change effects including trees and cover crops planting and also re-introducing the use of irrigation agriculture in these farming communities. Social implications With the creation of awareness, social groups and individuals can also make a social investment from these activities and also improve their social capitals, thereby reducing social burdens and improving their living conditions within the rural settings. Originality/value This research is an original research paper from the effort. the purpose is to assess the extent of climate change awareness level and how the effects of climate change increase or reduces the burden of gender workload among rural farmers and the strategies which can be used by these rural farmers to prevent, mitigate and adapt to climate change effects and the roles EE can play. This study has an original value in the sense that in the course of the study, the study hardly saw articles on these specific variables in whole research, hence the resolve to assess these variables.