5

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Chayote

The chayote is a popular and important home-grown food crop in tropical and

subtropical regions of the new world. Even in temperature regions, climatically

unsuited for its culture, modern air transportation has made the crop available in

market places, the crop can be grown with relative ease due to its adaptability to a

wide range of climatic conditions (Aung, et al., 1990)

Agriculture

Agriculture is the most important sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is

predicted to be negatively impacted by climate change (Deressa 2006; Moussa and

Amadou 2006; Jain 2006). It is clear that climate change will bring about substantial

welfare losses especially for small holders whose main source of livelihood derives

from agriculture.

Agriculture is strongly influenced by weather and climate. While farmers are

often flexible in dealing with weather and year-to-year variability, there is

nevertheless a high degree of adaptation to the local climate in the form of

established infrastructure, local farming practice and individual experience.

(https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/)

Climate change

Climate change was a bipartisan issue in the 1980s, with Republican Leader

George A.W. Bush pledging to “fight the greenhouse effects with the White House

effect” (Peterson, 1989,p. A1). However, in the early 1990s, conservative think-tanks

began the process of gradually polarizing the public through misinformation

campaigns (McCright and Dunlap, 2000). While contrarians rejecting the scientific
 6

consensus on climate change have branded themselves as “skeptic” this is

misleading label as genuine scepticism adopts an evidence

approach (Bjӧrnberg et., 2017; Lewandownsky, Ballard, Oberaver, Beneshad, 2016;

Odenbaugh, 2016)

Weather

Benjamin Collier (2009) assessed the weather index role to play in climate

adoption for households in lower income countries, and to explore the challenges

and opportunities that climate change presents for this form of insurance. The article

points out when risk assessment suggest that weather insurance is an appropriate

adoption tool, the government and donor assistance should focus on finding the start-

up costs of developing weather insurance markets and catastrophic layer of risk.