Difficulties in adaptation to climate change by oil palm farmers in Southern Nigeria

There is an increasing concern that climate change is already having an impact on poor, small scale oil palm farmers in Southern Nigeria. Researchers have shown that Nigeria is already being plagued with diverse ecological problems which have been linked to climate change. More so, increase in the severity of extreme weather events, sea level rise, coastal erosion, changes in weather pattern that affect oil palm production and changes in water availability are affecting vulnerable farmers and limiting their means of earning a living. The effect on families and communities can be devastating and adapting to these changes is essential. The paper highlights measures taken by famers to manage losses caused by climate change and difficulties encountered. A purposive and multi-stage random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 171 farmers from three states (Imo, Ondo and Delta). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing data. The constraints encountered by farmers in adopting climate change adaptation strategies were: high labor cost (0.759), land tenure (0.64), poor access to information (0.740), lack of training (0.767), lack of capital (0.820), limited availability of land (0.798) and lack of improved oil palm production technologies (0.438). Key words: Constraints, climate change, oil palm farmers and adaptation.