Weather Shocks, Impacts, and Households’ Ability to Recoverin Morocco
Introduction
Climate change is expected to result in an increase in global temperatures by 3°Cto 5°C in this century, as well as in a reduction in rainfall and greater seasonal temperature and rainfall variability in many areas. Higher sea levels are also threat to many areas, including in the MENA region where a large share of its population is located in low-lying areas. With agriculture remaining essential for livelihood in the region, and existing conditions in terms of water scarcity being already precarious in many areas, climate change represents a significant concern for households. Expectations are that extreme weather events such as floods and droughts are likely to become more frequent, which has implications for coping and adaptation mechanisms (for example, Elasha 2010; IPCC 2012; UNDP2009; McSweeney, New, and Lizcano 2009; Verner 2012; World Bank 2010). Fora brief review of the literature which informs this chapter, see the introduction of chapter 1 by Wodon et al. (2014) and chapter 2 on the five countries of focused for this work by Burger et al. (2014a), both in this study.In the case of Morocco, periodic droughts have now become the norm rather than the exception. These droughts tend to have substantial effects on households involved in agriculture in part because irrigated land is rare (Skees 2001;Swearingen and Bencherifa 2000). The evidence points to a decrease in rainfall of up to 25 percent and an increase in the frequency of droughts over the last three decades, which in turn has led to an increase in the volatility of the contribution of agriculture to GDP (Azzam and Sekkat 2005; Barakat and Handoufe1998; Skees 2001). While farmers have developed new ways to cope with droughts and the share of households relying primarily or solely on agriculture for their livelihood has decreased (Swearingen and Bencherifa 2000), many households remain engaged in agriculture and highly vulnerable to droughts,especially among the rural poor.This chapter provides a new assessment of the extent to which households aresubject to extreme weather shocks in Morocco, who suffers the most from theses shocks, and whether households are able to recover from the shocks. The analysis's based primarily on perceptions, with households assessing subjectively the extent to which they are affected by weather shocks as well as their ability to recover from these shocks. The data come from a recent nationally representative household survey data collected in Morocco in 2009/10. The main objective of the survey was to collect data on youth employment and civic engagement, but questions were added to the survey for this study on climate change both to assess to what extent households were affected by extreme weather events and to be able to compare their ability to recover from those shocks as opposed to other shocks.The data suggest that virtually all households working in agriculture are affected by weather shocks, often seriously. In the population as a whole, the proportion of households affected by weather shocks is about one fourth, simply because this is also roughly the proportion of those involved in agriculture, with other households less likely to be affected. A majority of households declare not being able to recover much from weather shocks, as well as a range of other shocks, and this is especially the case for poorer households. But in comparison to other shocks, including unexpected increases in the prices of food and other basic essential commodities, households are slightly more likely to be able to recover from weather shocks.These findings confirm, as was already observed in the analysis of chapter 4(Adoho and Wodon, 2014), that the poor tend to be most affected by extreme weather events that are likely to become more frequent with climate change,while they also have fewer means to cope with such events or recover from them. The chapter is organized as follows. Section two introduces the data used for the analysis. Section three provides basic statistics on the extent to which households are affected by weather and other shocks, and whether they are able to recover from the shocks. Section four provides a multivariate analysis of the correlates of both the likelihood of being affected by various shocks, and the agility to recover. A brief conclusion follows.
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