Abstract:
Adaptation to Climate Change (CC) is the adjustment in natural or human system in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects. To cushion and curb the devastating impacts of CC in South East Nigeria, there is great need to build resilience and capacities of institutions towards more lasting and far reaching approach to CC adaptation. With the phenomenon of CC becoming so alarming, building adaptive capacity, including providing tools and information, raising awareness of adaptation options, educating key professionals about CC and investing in CC science becomes imperative. In this context, individuals as well as collective capacity to put existing and new knowledge into practice is crucial as capacity includes "abilities, skills, understandings, attitudes, values, relationships, behaviours, motivations, resources and conditions that enable individuals, organizations, networks/sectors and broader social systems to carry out functions and achieve their development objectives over time. Adaptation to CC therefore, requires information generation and dissemination. The study assessed the capacity for agricultural adaptation to CC among university faculties of agriculture in South East Nigeria. A total of 120 respondents were selected using simple random sampling. Percentages, mean scores, and factor analysis were used in data analysis and presentation. The findings show that the teaching capacities of the universities to CC adaptation were low. In the same vein, the research capacities of the universities in CC issues were found to be on the low ebb. These were seen in the very few numbers of CC researches and activities carried out in the universities. On outreach capacities of the universities to CC adaptation, it was found to be very poor. However, the medium most frequently used were posters, fliers, lectures, farm visits/ village outreach and the use of radio programmes. The respondents’ perceived constraints to building CC agricultural adaptation in the universities include, poor learning environment, lack of reliable weather forecast/climate information, lack of proper policy/policy implementation on CC, poor outreach capacities in terms of human resources on CC, lack of technical and communication facilities, poor or absence of teaching materials, lack/limited availability of grants and scholarship on CC issues, lack of funds for research on CC, poor funding for teaching etc.
