Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change
Open Access

Abstract

There is need to examine climate change awareness and perception among indigenous people. This will greatly reduce the failures in measures to develop a wide effective monitoring, adaptation and mitigation measures to climate change. This study examines the way indigenous people living around parks perceive climate change, their adaptation strategies to climate change, the impacts of climate change on their various activities and any perceive hindrance to its adaptation. This study was conducted in four national parks; Old Oyo National Park (OONP), Kainji Lake National Park (KLNP), Cross River National Park (CRNP) and Okomu National Park (ONP). Questionnaire was administered to 531 respondents from villages through multi-stage random sampling. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, etc. Chi-square analysis was used to determine the relationship between the respondent’s demographic characteristics and their level of perception of climate change. Majority of the respondents were male; OONP (57.7%), KLNP (75.5%), CRNP (73.7%) and ONP (63.6%). In terms of age, majority of the respondents in CRNP, KLNP and ONP were between the ages 21-30 (35.8%, 36.8% and 36.4% respectively). Majority of the respondents 66.4%, 52.6%, 48.1%, 60.0% in OONP, CRNP, KLNP and ONP strongly agreed that the climate is changing due to diverse human activities. The result shows that age, qualifications and gender have significant relationship (p<0.05) with the respondent’s awareness and perception of climate change. The result of the multiple regression analysis to determine the socio-economic factors contributing to the awareness of climate change shows that age, sex, religion and occupation were found to have contributed the level of awareness of climate change in the study area. There is need to develop policy on combating climate change and also improve the people’s adaptive capacity to cope with climate change.

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