Weather shocks, coping strategies and household well-being: Evidence from rural Mauritania[Chocs météorologiques, stratégies d'adaptation et bien-être des ménages ruraux en Mauritanie]

The extent to which farm households can successfully employ coping strategies to smooth their consumption in the face of droughts depends crucially on the intensity of the climatic shocks. In this study, we analyse geo-coded climate data matched with household data from the two rounds of Mauritania's Permanent Survey on Living Conditions of Households (EPCV) to compare the impact of the 2008 and 2014 droughts on rural households' welfare and the adaptation strategies that they subsequently employed. The 2008 and 2014 droughts differ sharply in intensity. The 2008 drought was localized with about 45% rural households reporting loss of livestock. In contrast, the 2014 drought was the worst in a decade and affected nearly all parts of the country. We generate a number of indicators of drought intensity in Mauritania and examine their impact on per capita consumption, livestock assets and poverty incidence among Mauritanian households. We find that households living in departments where the 2014 drought was at least one standard deviation more intense relative to the department's long-term precipitation average have an 11.9% lower per capita consumption and 8.9% higher likelihood of falling below the national poverty line compared to households which faced less-intense drought. Importantly, we observe no such welfare losses during the 2008 drought. Change in household asset portfolio sheds light on these findings: Household wealth fell during both periods of drought, implying that farm households attempted to maintain consumption by liquidating assets, especially livestock. However, ownership of small ruminants (goats and sheep) grew, suggesting a greater reliance on more drought-resistant livestock species. The sale of livestock and raising of greater numbers of small ruminants helped maintain consumption levels during the 2008 drought but did not entirely compensate for the losses or could prevent households from reducing consumption during the 2014 drought.