Climate and health adaptation capacities of indigenous communities and associated factors in Kanungu district, Uganda

Abstract

Climate change remains a rapidly emerging global concern that needs attention from the different sectors as it can pose significant health risks, particularly to vulnerable communities like women, children, and the internally displaced. The indigenous communities of Kanungu district require enhanced knowledge to have better perceptions about climate change and hence develop adaptive capacities and hence develop resilience to climate change-related health risks and impacts for example floods, water stress, heat stress, landslides and food insecurity due to the long periods of no rain amongst the different planting seasons. Objective: To explore how climate change is affecting health and the health determinants of indigenous communities and their local adaptation mechanisms in Kanungu district. This study employed triangulation through a mix of methods, including participant observations, five focus group discussions of different family heads, and a household survey through the interviewer-administered questionnaire on the 101 households of Kanungu district. The study revealed that more than half of the respondents, 52.5% (53/101), were females. The majority of the respondents, 65.4% (66/101), were married, and 33.7% (34/101) had attained a primary education. The majority of the households had a maximum of 5 people staying together, and this accounted for the 28.7% (29/101). Furthermore, 89.0% (90/101) of the household heads had accessed the information from various sources, with radio as the most used source of information, 52.2% (47/101). The study found a high prevalence of health impacts brought about by climate change. Given the influence of different factors like knowledge level, education level, age, gender of the household heads, and financial constraints, as the major barriers to climate change adaptation which yielded to their poor adaptation capacity.