Thirteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly recognized internationally as one of the most substantial challenges in achieving sustainable development. The nature based tourism industry is undoubtedly not immune to climatic changes. Based on chaos-complexity theory, this study investigates the effects of climate change on natural resources in the Maasai Mara National Game Reserve (MMNGR). The specific objective of the study was to establish the effects of climate change on natural resources (wildlife and vegetation) in MMNGR. The study adopts explanatory research design. The sample size was 507 respondents comprised of 399 households, ninety tourists, and eighteen experts selected by simple random sampling, convenience sampling, and snowball sampling respectively. Changes in vegetation cover were determined from satellite imagery using normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) method. Structured questionnaires collected data from the host community which was analyzed using Pearson product moment of correlation, linear and multiple regressions. There was also a positive significant relationship between climate change and natural resources (β=0.286 and p=0.000). Moreover, climate change affects natural resources positively as there was a positive significant relationship. For more than thirty years, the Maasai Mara National Game Reserve has experienced a great deal of climatic changes attributed to change in rainfall and temperature patterns. The analysis from the NDVI from 1975 to 2018 strongly supports this hypothesis. Conclusively, for more than thirty-five years, Maasai Mara National Reserve experienced climatic changes which led to reduction to NDVI. The results from the maps suggests that there is a strong correlation between rainfall and NDVI.