Who Benefits, Who Loses and What can be done? - An Assessment of the Economic Impacts of Climate Change with and without Adaptation on Smallholder Farmers in Ghana

This paper presents the empirical proof of the economic impacts of climate change on smallholder farmers in a semi-arid agro-ecological district in Ghana. We employ the Trade-off Analysis Minimum Data (TOA-MD) Model simulated yield projections from five climate model scenarios HADCM, CGCM, CSIRO, NCAR and MIROC with farm survey data to estimate the economic impacts of climate change on smallholder farmers in the Lawra district of Ghana with and without adaptation.. The findings reveal that smallholders in the district will suffer losses in net revenue, per capita income and increased poverty rates without adaptation. Adaptation will however, reverses the losses and results in potential gains with per farm net revenues and per capita incomes increasing between 10% to 17% and 1% to 7% respectively, while poverty rates decline by 13-20% for upland farms. Lowland farms are expected to experience a reduction in poverty of between 2-10%. Overall, adaptation has the potential of reducing poverty rates by as much as 8 -16% for all farms. The study recommends improving irrigation access to smallholder farmers in both upland and lowland areas to enable them adapt to water scarcity due to climate change. Key words: Climate change, small holder farmers, poverty reduction, TOA-model, Ghana Acknowledgement