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Top1. Introduction
The weather and climate of African continent are changing differently and major concerns are attributed to the fact that intense rainfall is under record in some places while other areas are projected to registering drying scenarios (Osabuohien et al. 2020; Gonzalez et al. 2018). The recorded global greenhouse gas emissions are putting the world on a path toward unacceptable warming, with serious implications for development prospects in Africa (Bang and Few 2012). It is reported that limiting warming to 1.5° C is possible by ensuring unprecedented changes. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014; Norbu et al. 2008) states that this can only be possible by considering all transition occurring in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities (IPCC 2014).
Under climate change, it is predicted that the temperature and precipitation will rise by about 2oC, and 1 to 2%, respectively, in the next decades, and this consequently, will cause wet place to become much wetter and dry places will be much drier (Dami et al. 2017; Fosu-Mensah et al. 2012). The rainfall and temperature patterns resulting from the changing climate generate risks such as droughts, Tsunamis, water borne diseases, heatwaves, storm winds, and floods. These risks are severely causing immense losses among the communities, primarily poor people due to lack of risk awareness, adaptation and financial capabilities (Bang and Few 2012; Huong et al. 2018; Orencio and Fujii 2014; Mızrak and Aslan 2020).
Within the East Africa, where Rwanda is located, more than 90 percent of the recorded natural disasters are hydro-meteorological caused by climate change causing serve losses and other negative impacts on the socio-economic and environmental wellbeing of the community (Sowers et al. 2011; Chaudhury et al. 2013). In Rwanda, climate change generated heavy rains, drought, flood, landslides, cropland damage and famine, which as reported, between 1980 and 2017 affected more than one million people (killed, injured and homeless), damaged more than 15,000 ha of cropland and 23,000 houses were destroyed (MIDIMAR 2017). More losses are mainly registered in the north-western parts of Rwanda including the Gicumbi district (Wagesho and Claire 2016; Rugigana et al. 2013).
Existing government reports on climate change and its impact on livelihoods highlighted that the northern Rwanda is under threat of disasters, mainly flood and landslide resulting from change in rainfall intensity which in turn affects people’s livelihoods, and Gicumbi district was among the largely affected areas (MIDIMAR 2017, 2014; DDP 2013). This expresses a necessity of conducting an academic research on this matter to indicate the impact of climate variability on community livelihoods in Gicumbi district of the northern Rwanda. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze the impact of climate variability mainly rainfall on community livelihoods. The authors believe that the findings of this research will enable policy makers to better understand rainfall variability, the recorded community losses associated to climate variability and the best practices which can be adopted in the study area for adaptation to the changing climate.