Search

Floods are extreme events affecting millions of people worldwide and causing loss worth billions. The magnitude and frequency of floods are likely to increase with altered climate, and developing countries tend to suffer the most because of low resilience and adaptive capacity. This research aimed to analyze existing and preferred future flood adaptation strategies in a flood-prone West Rapti River (WRR) Basin of Nepal, using hydrological analysis and flood modelling, and a social survey of 240 households (HHs) and several focus group discussions (FGDs). The specific objectives were to (1) understand the rainfall-flood behaviour of the basin in a simplistic way, (2) carry out flood modelling to generate inundation maps for informing the local people, and (3) identify flood adaptation strategies based on people’s perception. Flood inundation maps are generated for four scenarios based on return periods: scenario I (2 years), scenario II (20 years), scenario III (50 years), and scenario IV (100 years). Results show that the southern parts of three rural municipalities (Duduwa, Narainapur, and Rapti Sonari) get inundated almost every year irrespective of the flood magnitude. This information was presented to local communities before administering the HH survey and FGDs so that they could make informed decisions. During the survey, the preference of people’s adaptation strategies for the four flood scenarios was explored and prioritized. Our findings suggest that peoples’ thoughts and preferences for adaptation strategies changed with exposure to flood magnitudes. For example, “bamboo mesh with sand filled bags”—simplest and least expensive adaptation strategy—was preferred for a less severe flood while a complex and expensive technique “reservoir/flood regulating structures” was preferred for a devastating flood scenario. Thus, this study has highlighted firstly, the importance of inundation maps to understand and inform the local people about floods and their impacts; and secondly, the value of information to the people enabling them to make informed decisions. The novelty of this empirical study lies in a multi-disciplinary assessment framework which integrates scientific information, stakeholder knowledge, and local people’s perceptions of flood risks and adaptation strategies for the future. Such an approach of hydro-social analysis has the potential for replication in flood-prone regions globally, with similar bio-physical and socio-economic conditions.

The Himalayan country like Nepal, due to its poor adaptive capacity and limited access to alternate means of livelihoods, is more vulnerable to climate change. It is found that climate change exacerbates the situation and presents a daunting challenge to predominantly rain-fed agricultural livelihoods. This study aims to analyze the extent and sources of households’ livelihood vulnerability to climate change in western Nepal. We conducted a household survey (n = 200), focus group discussions (n = 4), and key informant interviews (n = 10) across the Phusre Khola watershed and a formative composite index of livelihood vulnerability (LVI) was constructed. The result shows drought as the most common climatic hazard followed by landslide and hailstone, respectively. It was found that agriculture was the most impacted resources. Livelihood strategies with LVI value (0.49) and climate variability (0.48) were seen as the most vulnerable and health (0.12) as the least vulnerable component in the study area. The Upper Phusre sub-watershed was observed as the most vulnerable with the LVI (0.33). Overall, the study shows that vulnerability assessment indices can be broadly applied in similar settings in different regions of the country, and they could contribute to identifying and prioritizing adaptation and mitigation needs.

Climate change is a reality in Africa’s drylands. Pastoralists are engaging and embracing a range of adaptive strategies to adjust to these changes. The socioeconomic factors driving them to engage in a portfolio of multiple adaptation strategies have not been adequately addressed in the existing literature. A multivariate probit model was used to analyze them as determinants of adaptive capacity that promotes or hinders adaptation to climate change. Adaptation is represented by uptake of multiple strategies (irrigation, livestock migration, fodder production, and improved livestock breeds) by households, a demonstration of a household’s ability to diversify and adapt to the effects of climate change. The household asset base, particularly social capital represented by government assistance, stands out as it positively influenced by the uptake of four out of five adaptation strategies; that is, irrigation, livestock manure, fodder production, and improved breeds. Information heavily supports the adaptation process as it influenced all the five adaptation strategies analyzed but has a heterogeneous effect, supporting households to either adopt or reject a strategy. Crop-based information positively determines uptake of yield-enhancing strategies while relevant information for livestock activities contributes to the uptake of livestock-based strategies. These findings suggest that mainstreaming agricultural innovations, building a household asset base, and facilitating access to agronomic and climatic information will enable dryland communities to better adapt to climate change.

Many people in African countries derive their livelihoods from agriculture. Therefore, unfavourable environmental and climatic conditions render them more vulnerable to increasing food insecurity and poverty rates. However, few studies have investigated how farmers’ adaptation strategies affect farm productivity and household food security in the Sahelian region, notably Mali. We analyse factors that influence adaptation strategies to climate change and the impacts of the adaptation strategies on maize productivity and household food security in southern Mali. Farmers use adaptation strategies such as organic fertilizers, changing planting dates and growing of short duration maize varieties to mitigate against the negative effects of climate change. We find that farmer experience, number of livestock owned, off-farm employment, access to credit, farmer association and technical training exert positive effects on the use of planting short-duration maize varieties as an adaptation strategy, while distance to the farm shows a negative effect. We observe that household size, experience in maize farming, number of livestock owned and technical training positively influence farmers to change planting dates as an adaptation strategy. The use of organic fertilizers and short-duration maize varieties promote maize productivity and food security. We conclude that building farmers’ adaptive capacity tends to reduce their vulnerability to climate change by increasing crop yields and food security., CGIAR Fund

Climate change will significantly impact the future viability and security of food production systems, with increased frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, storms and other extreme climatic events predicted in many regions. In order for food production systems to remain viable and resilient under a changing climate, novel approaches, which integrate risk management (i.e. adaptation) and risk transfer strategies, such as insurance, are required. We argue that the coordinated integration of risk management and risk transfer approaches will support greater resilience of food production systems under climate change. Conversely, if risk management and risk transfer strategies are not carefully integrated, there is potential to undermine adaptive capacity (e.g. insurance subsidies may dissuade farmers from investing in climate adaptation) and ultimately reduce the capacity of food production systems to cope with and recover from the adverse impacts of climate change. Here we propose a resilience-based conceptual framework for integrating risk management and risk transfer strategies along with four key principles, which we believe could underlie their successful integration and thus enhance food production system resilience under climate change. These are as follows: (1) pro-active investments in farmer climate adaptation rather than re-active disaster relief, (2) structuring of government subsidies around insurance and climate disaster relief to incentivise farmer climate adaptation, (3) rewarding farmer efforts towards climate adaptation with cheaper insurance premiums for those farmers that invest resources into climate adaptation and (4) recognising investments in the integration of farm climate adaptation and risk transfer schemes within the broader context of future climate disaster risk management and global food security. Such an integrated investment approach could substantially reduce future economic losses for farmers while also enhancing food security under climate change.

In examining the impact of climate change on binational governance of the Great Lakes between 2012 and 2019, this article evaluates the extent to which Canada and the U.S. have implemented the objectives in the climate change impacts annex—Annex 9—to the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA), in cooperation with diverse networks of governmental and nongovernmental actors. It also examines whether action taken thus far to implement Annex 9 indicate a marked improvement in adaptive capacity in addressing climate problems in the Great Lakes Basin. The author argues that the effectiveness of climate action in the Great Lakes Basin depends not only on the domestic efforts of the U.S. and Canadian governments, the responsible parties in implementing binational water agreements. It also hinges on whether they have the institutional capacity and the political will required to help fund and coordinate the actions of the several heterogeneous networks. Between 2012 and 2019, significant progress was made in the areas of information-sharing, network-building, and capacity-building for more effective measurement, monitoring, and analysis of climate change impacts in the Great Lakes Basin. However, the Parties have not yet developed a long-term binational framework for action supporting climate change adaptation and resilience. In the meantime, First Nations and municipal and other networks are implementing their own community-level resilience plans, but these actors cannot fully compensate for weak federal leadership and inadequate human and financial resources.

Climate change and variability threaten the sustainability of agricultural and food production, especially in agrarian communities. In Southern Africa, rainfall is expected to decline by almost 10% by the year 2050 and the largest increase in temperature can be experienced. Despite the potential risks of climate change on agricultural productivity, Botswana does not have a dedicated policy to respond to climate change. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research done in Botswana to provide an understanding of factors that shape farmers’ adaptation to climate change and institutional link to the adaptive capacity of farming households. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyse institutions that influence farmers’ adaptation strategies of farmers in Botswana, using Ngamiland East as a case study. The paper relies on empirical data collected from purposively selected key informants and 300 households. The results show that the majority of farmers who have climate variability adaptation strategies in place are largely influenced by indigenous knowledge. Women and low-income earners are less likely to employ climate change adaptation strategies in order to improve their agricultural productivity. This article gives a better perspective of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing institutions designed to enable agricultural productivity. It recommends that macro-level and local government institutions should acknowledge the indigenous knowledge, community-level institutions and farmers’ adaptive capacity in policy formulation processes.

This study focuses on heat stress conditions for dairy cattle production in West Africa under current and future climatic conditions. After testing the accuracy of the dynamically downscaled climate datasets for simulating the historical daily maximum temperature (Tmax) and relative humidity (RH) in West Africa for 50 meteorological stations, we used the dataset for calculating the temperature-humidity index (THI), i.e., an index indicating heat stress for dairy cattle on a daily scale. Calculations were made for the historical period (1981–2010) using the ERA-Interim reanalysis dataset, and for two future periods (2021–2050 and 2071–2100) using climate predictions of the GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, and MPI-ESM-MR Global Circulation Models (GCMs) under the RCP4.5 emission scenario. Here, we show that during the period from 1981 to 2010 for > 1/5 of the region of West Africa, the frequency of severe/danger heat events per year, i.e., events that result in significant decreases in productive and reproductive performances, increased from 11 to 29–38 days (significant at 95% confidence level). Most obvious changes were observed for the eastern and southeastern parts. Under future climate conditions periods with severe/danger heat stress events will increase further as compared with the historical period by 5–22% depending on the GCM used. Moreover, the average length of periods with severe/danger heat stress is expected to increase from ~ 3 days in the historical period to ~ 4–7 days by 2021–2050 and even to up to 10 days by 2071–2100. Based on the average results of three GCMs, by 2071–2100, around 22% of dairy cattle population currently living in this area is expected to experience around 70 days more of severe/danger heat stress (compare with the historical period), especially in the southern half of West Africa. The result is alarming, as it shows that dairy production systems in West Africa are jeopardized at large scale by climate change and that depending on the GCM used, milk production might decrease by 200–400 kg/year by 2071–2100 in around 1, 7, or 11%. Our study calls for the development of improved dairy cattle production systems with higher adaptive capacity in order to deal with expected future heat stress conditions., African Union Commission

Farmers’ subjective perceptions of climatic changes are not always in line with historic climate observations. Adaptation decisions based on these perceptions thus remain controversial. The paper therefore relates to the following questions: First, what are farmers’ perceptions of climatic changes? Second, do they correlate with observations from climatic data? Third, how do farmers respond and what are the factors determining adaptation? The analysis is based on household survey data from a sample of 900 farmers in rural Tanzania and secondary data from local meteorological stations. We find that farmers’ perception of a rising average temperature over time is generally confirmed. This is not the case for rainfall: farmers perceive that annual rainfall amount decreased, while climate data rather shows no change in the amount, but indicates a change in the rainfall pattern. However, we do find only a weak link between farmers’ perception and their behavior. Although farmers perceive climatic changes to happen and to affect them, some choose to not adapt at all and many only react in an evasive way, i.e., by coping measures that will not protect their household from future damage. Only a small share of farmers chose investment-intensive long-term strategies such as irrigation systems. Results confirm that a limited adaptive capacity plays a role, but also reveal the intention to adapt as a relevant factor. This is represented by the farmers’ loss experience due to climatic shocks and personality traits. This approach gives a more complete picture of the farmers’ adaptation decision.

Indices assessing country-level climate and disaster risk at the global scale have experienced a steep rise in popularity both in science and international climate policy. A number of widely cited products have been developed and published over the recent years, argued to contribute critical knowledge for prioritizing action and funding. However, it remains unclear how their results compare, and how consistent their findings are on country-level risk, exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping, as well as adaptive capacity. This paper analyses and compares the design, data, and results of four of the leading global climate and disaster risk indices: The World Risk Index, the INFORM Risk Index, ND-GAIN Index, and the Climate Risk Index. Our analysis clearly shows that there is considerable degree of cross-index variation regarding countries’ risk levels and comparative ranks. At the same time, there is above-average agreement for high-risk countries. In terms of risk sub-components, there is surprisingly little agreement in the results on hazard exposure, while strong inter-index correlations can be observed when ranking countries according to their socio-economic vulnerability and lack of coping as well as adaptive capacity. Vulnerability and capacity hotspots can hence be identified more robustly than risk and exposure hotspots. Our findings speak both to the potential as well as limitations of index-based approaches. They show that a solid understanding of index-based assessment tools, and their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, is necessary to navigate them properly and interpret as well as use their results in triangulation.

In this paper, we evaluate a single-index polymorphic production function that relates agricultural output to temperature and precipitation. The advantage of this new approach to measuring agricultural vulnerability under climatic change is that a single-index measure of vulnerability can capture a range of climate responses including plateau effects. The approach identifies plateau effects in the crop yield-weather relationship and provides overall fits consistent with higher-order polynomial fitting. We apply the technique to corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton at the USA county level. We illustrate its computation and use as a critical policy variable.

Women’s capacities are often constrained due to their roles in their household and society, institutional barriers and social norms. These constraints result in low adaptive capacity of women, which make them more vulnerable to hazards. As more men seek employment opportunities away from home, women are required to acquire new capacities to manage new challenges, including risks from climate change. An action research was conducted to assess impacts of capacity building interventions for women left behind in enhancing adaptive capacity of migrant-sending households in rural areas vulnerable to floods in Nepal. This study finds that capacity-building interventions, which aimed to strengthen autonomous adaptation measures (e.g. precautionary savings and flood preparedness), also positively influenced women to approach formal institutions. Besides, the intervention households were more likely to invest a part of the precautionary savings in flood preparedness measures than control households.

Urban areas of developing countries face increasing risks due to climate change. This paper systematically identifies and examines research published between 2000 and 2017 that assesses urban adaptive capacity to climate change in developing countries. To critically examine this literature, we developed a conceptual framework of urban adaptive capacity. The framework focuses on key components of urban adaptive capacity in three dimensions: the characterization of adaptive capacity, the external factors mediating adaptive capacity, and the dynamics of adaptive capacity. The study sheds light on the spatial and scalar interactions of individuals, communities, and authorities’ adaptive capacities within urban areas and highlights the importance of governance and social institutions in shaping urban adaptive capacity. The work also finds shortcomings in the current assessment of urban adaptive capacity, with key gaps including a narrow focus on the range and types of adaptive capacity; limited assessment of the multilevel determinants, place-based processes, and urban determinants that shape adaptive capacity; and a lack of consideration of adaptive capacity interactions between social entities and with regard to climate sensitivity and exposure of a given area, including the potential for maladaptation. Addressing these research gaps would contribute to generate knowledge that can adequately support adaptation planning of urban areas in developing countries.

Climate change is an ongoing process that has profound impacts on global environment and economy. This study focused on floods impacting Guyanese sugar industry. The study developed a conceptual framework representing an agriculture system’s vulnerability to a climate change stimulus/stimuli to assist in selecting indicators that can more accurately and realistically represent vulnerability. The development of a conceptual framework followed the IPCC (2007) framework composing of three vulnerability factors, that is, exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity; however, it added some novelty as to how each of these factors is defined, their relationships, sequence of their occurrences, and their attributes. This study uses an impact-based approach to identify sensitivity indicators by investigating the impacts of floods on Guyanese sugar. This methodology resulted in indicators that can realistically measure an agriculture system’s vulnerability to a climate change stimulus/stimuli. Multiple indicators were used to measure sugar vulnerability with experts’ opinions used to assign weights (by the Analytical Hierarchy Process) to both the vulnerability factors and their indicators to arrive at annual sugar vulnerability indexes for the period 2003 to 2016. The study showed that Guyanese sugar was highly vulnerable to floods and adaptation measures were identified to target specific indicators.

Batad Rice Terraces of Ifugao, Philippines, is declared as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System due to its traditional system characterized with a synergy of goals of biodiversity conservation, sustainable productivity, and strengthening of traditions and culture. It is also inscribed as a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. However, in spite of the fact that it is considered a living sustainable agricultural system, it is hypothesized that the rice terraces are not immune to the impacts brought about by climate change. This study aimed to determine the level of vulnerability of Batad Rice Terraces to climate change impacts. To do this, the study examined the vulnerability as a function of exposure (E), sensitivity (S), and adaptive capacity (AC). The study used 28 indicators: 5 for exposure, 12 for sensitivity, and 11 for adaptive capacity. A total of 114 respondents were interviewed and focus group discussions were conducted in July–August 2017. Results of the study showed that the vulnerability rating for the study was 0.51 (E = 0.40; S = 0.65; and AC = 0.51) which indicated that Batad Rice Terraces is moderately vulnerable to climate change impacts. Of the 28 indicators, the key vulnerability indices are from sensitivity and adaptive capacity components. Under sensitivity, it includes acidic soil pH, soil potassium deficiency, the perceived increase in the presence of pests, the high dependence on irrigation structure, agricultural unsuitability, and food import dependency, while adaptive capacity indicators include the declining practice of key traditions and the low number of farmers per household.

How do patterns of interactions among policy actors shape their ability to contribute to climate change adaptation decision-making processes in fragmented regional governance settings? We address this question through statistical models of adaptation policy actors’ assessments of access to scientific/technical information as well as their perceptions of cooperation and procedural fairness across numerous adaptation decision-making processes operating in the Lake Victoria region, East Africa. We measured actors’ collaborative interactions as well as their participation in task forces, steering committees, and other policy forums that have emerged in response to the challenges of building adaptive capacity to the effects of climate change in the region. Because information access, cooperation, and procedural fairness are shaped by social processes, we tested how the performance of policy forums varied according to different measures of social capital. Specifically, we distinguished between bridging social capital (the value of relationships that span or broker between distinct subgroups) and bonding social capital (which results from frequent interaction or from clustered relationships within subgroups). We found that measures of bridging social capital had a positive effect on actors’ assessments of their access to information in policy forums, but a negative effect on their perceptions of cooperation and procedural fairness in forums. In contrast, measures of bonding social capital had a positive effect on cooperation and procedural fairness, but no effect on information access. Taken together, our results suggest that different forms of social capital have separate—and potentially opposing—effects on distinct measures of the performance of adaptation policy forums. The relative importance of each performance measure, which may vary from one policy forum to another, should guide efforts to encourage different forms of social capital across the numerous decision-making processes that comprise regional climate change adaptation governance systems.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has a significant role to play in reducing the gender gap in labor burden for women in agriculture. A targeted approach to address this gap can be useful in developing a women-responsive climatic risk management plan focused on reducing their labor burden in agriculture, especially in areas with high climate risks. The paper therefore presents a top–down approach to identify potential labor-saving CSA technologies for women farmers in areas facing high climate risks. It involves mapping women in agriculture, climate risks, and poverty hotspots and entails understanding the role of women in agricultural activities to identify the suitable CSA options for reducing the levels of labor drudgery. The study is illustrated for Nepal where feminization of agriculture is rapidly increasing, a high level of climatic risks persists, and adaptive capacity to climate change is very low, especially among women in agriculture. Results are presented for two hotspot districts, Rupandehi and Chitwan. Household socioeconomic characteristics were found to play a major role in women’s labor contribution in different crop production activities. Discussions with farmers provided a list of more than 15 CSA interventions with labor reduction as well as yield-improving potential. Accordingly, considering the local crop, agro-climate, and social conditions, and women’s participation in different agricultural activities, CSA technologies and practices such as direct seeded rice (zero tillage and low tillage using machine), green manuring (GM), laser land leveling (LLL), and system of rice intensification (SRI) were found to potentially reduce women’s drudgery in agriculture along with improvement in productivity and farm income.

Human behavior is responsible for global climate change. The impact of climate change is worse in poor countries like Ethiopia whose agriculture heavily relies on rainfall. The aim of this research was to assess farmers’ perceptions and their collective and individual response mechanisms to the impacts of climate variability and extremes.A sequential mixed research design was applied to conduct the research. In the first phase, 22 key informants and 32 FGD participants were purposely selected for the qualitative data. Three decades of areal gridded temperature and rainfall data were collected from the National Meteorological Agency. During the second phase, quantitative data were collected from 124 randomly selected farmers through questionnaire. Appropriate qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques were employed. Accordingly, the study revealed that the district has been experiencing a declining rainfall and increasing temperature. Persistent drought, limited surface and underground water, crop pests, and animal diseases were found to be the main impacts of climate change that harmed agricultural productivity. The traditional causal attribution of climate change to God’s wrath by farmers is decreasing. However, farmers’ collective efficacy to reverse the impact of drought was found to be low. Social loan services, borrowing seeds from relatives, working through joint collaboration (Jegie) have been major indigenous responses. Planting drought resistant crop varieties, rainwater harvesting, destocking, cut and carry livestock feeding, and soil and water conservation measures were the common planned adaptation responses to with stand the impacts of climate variability. Climate variability, especially the recurrent drought events erodes the farmers’ collective efficacy to manage the climate change risk. The introduction of drought resistant crop & livestock varieties, and livelihood diversification intervention could play crucial role to restore their adaptive capacity and confidence.

As the impacts of climate change on human society accelerate, coastal communities are vulnerable to changing environmental conditions. The capacity of communities and households to respond to these changes (i.e., their adaptive capacity) will determine the impacts of climate and co-occurring stressors. To date, empirical evidence linking theoretical measures of adaptive capacity to community and household responses remains limited. Here, we conduct a global meta-analysis examining how metrics of adaptive capacity translate to human responses to change (Adapt, React, Cope response) in 22 small-scale fishing case studies from 20 countries (n = 191 responses). Using both thematic and qualitative comparative analysis, we evaluate how responses to climate, environmental, and social change were influenced by domains of adaptive capacity. Our findings show that adaptive responses at the community level only occurred in situations where the community had Access to Assets, in combination with other domains including Diversity and Flexibility, Learning and Knowledge, and Natural Capital. In contrast, Access to Assets was nonessential for adaptive responses at the household level. Adaptive households demonstrated Diversity and Flexibility when supported by strong Governance or Institutions and were often able to substitute Learning and Knowledge and Natural Capital with one another. Standardized metrics of adaptive capacity are essential to designing effective policies promoting resilience in natural resource-dependent communities and understanding how social and ecological aspects of communities interact to influence responses. Our framework describes how small-scale fishing communities and households respond to environmental changes and can inform policies that support vulnerable populations.

In this paper, CSS’s Christine Eriksen, Florian Roth, Linda Maduz and Tim Prior propose a re-examination of the dynamic relationship between affluence and vulnerability —a complex association defined as the Affluence–Vulnerability Interface (AVI). A more nuanced understanding of the AVI can (1) problematize the notion that increasing material affluence necessarily has a mitigating influence on social vulnerability, (2) extend analysis of social vulnerability beyond low-income regions to include affluent contexts and (3) improve understanding of how psychosocial characteristics influence people’s vulnerability. In diesem Papier schlagen die CSS Forscher Christine Eriksen, Florian Roth, Linda Maduz und Tim Prior eine erneute Untersuchung der dynamischen Beziehung zwischen Wohlstand und Verwundbarkeit vor — eine komplexe Verbindung, die als Affluence-Vulnerability Interface (AVI) definiert wird. Ein nuancierteres Verständnis der AVI kann (1) die Vorstellung problematisieren, dass zunehmender materieller Wohlstand notwendigerweise einen mildernden Einfluss auf die soziale Verwundbarkeit hat, (2) die Analyse der sozialen Verwundbarkeit über einkommensschwache Regionen hinaus auf wohlhabende Kontexte ausdehnen und (3) das Verständnis dafür verbessern, wie psychosoziale Merkmale die Verwundbarkeit von Menschen beeinflussen. ISSN:0165-0009 ISSN:1573-1480

Small-scale farmers are highly threatened by climate change. Experts often base their interventions to support farmers to adapt to climate change on their own perception of farmers’ livelihood risks. However, if differences in risk perception between farmers and experts exist, these interventions might fail. Thus, for effective design and implementation of adaptation strategies for farmers, it is necessary to understand farmers’ perception and how it influences their decision-making. We analyze farmers’ and experts’ systemic view on climate change threats in relation to other agricultural livelihood risks and assess the differences between their perceptions. For Cauca, Colombia, we found that experts and farmers perceived climate-related and other livelihood risks differently. While farmers’ perceived risks were a failure in crop production and lack of access to health and educational services, experts, in contrast, perceived insecurity and the unreliable weather to be the highest risks for farmers. On barriers that prevent farmers from taking action against risks, experts perceived both external factors such as the national policy and internal factors such as the adaptive capacity of farmers to be the main barriers. Farmers ranked the lack of information, especially about weather and climate, as their main barrier to adapt. Effective policies aiming at climate change adaptation need to relate climate change risks to other production risks as farmers often perceive climate change in the context of other risks. Policymakers in climate change need to consider differences in risk perception.

Summarization: Summer tourism is one of the most important contributors to the European GDP especially for the southern countries and is highly dependent on the climatic conditions. Changes in average climatic conditions, along with the potential subsequent changes in the physical environment, will pose stress on the favorability of the climate of European destinations for tourism and recreational activities. Here, we study the vulnerability of summer-oriented tourism due to a global temperature increase by 2 °C relative to the preindustrial era. We use a well-defined framework of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indicators for a set of plausible climate (RCPs) and socioeconomic (SSPs) combinations. Our result shows that a 2 °C global warming will pose substantial changes to the vulnerability of the European tourism sector. Despite the general increase in exposure, the vulnerability of summer tourism is highly depended on the socioeconomic developments (SSPs). Although exposure is higher for most of the popular southern European destinations like Spain, France, South Italy, southernmost Greece, and Cyprus, they are expected to be less vulnerable than others, under specific SSPs, due to their higher capacity to adapt to a different climate. The capacity to adapt is lower for higher emission scenarios. Substantial changes are also apparent at the subnational level. Countries like France are foreseen to experience very diverse impacts and vulnerabilities within their own territories that will have consequences in terms of domestic tourism. The dynamics of these changes are expected to alter the state of the current European tourism regime. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Climatic Change

Few assessments of species vulnerability to climate change used to inform conservation management consider the intrinsic traits that shape species’ capacity to respond to climate change. This omission is problematic as it may result in management actions that are not optimised for the long-term persistence of species as climates shift. We present a tool for explicitly linking data on plant species’ life history traits and range characteristics to appropriate management actions that maximise their capacity to respond to climate change. We deliberately target data on easily measured and widely available traits (e.g. dispersal syndrome, height, longevity) and range characteristics (e.g. range size, climatic/soil niche breadth), to allow for rapid comparison across many species. We test this framework on 1237 plants, categorising species on the basis of their potential climate change risk as related to four factors affecting their response capacity: reproduction, movement capability, abiotic niche specialisation and spatial coverage. Based on these four factors, species were allocated risk scores, and these were used to test the hypothesis that the current protection status under national legislation and related management actions capture species response capacity to climate change. Our results indicate that 20% of the plant species analysed (242 species) are likely to have a low capacity to respond to climate change based on the traits assessed, and are therefore at high risk. Of the 242 high risk species, only 10% (24 species) are currently listed for protection under conservation legislation. Importantly, many management plans for these listed species fail to address the capacity of species to respond to climate change with appropriate actions: 70% of approved management plans do not include crucial actions which may improve species’ ability to adapt to climate change. We illustrate how the use of easily attainable traits associated with ecological and evolutionary responses to changing environmental conditions can inform conservation actions for plant species globally.

The well-being of human societies in many parts of the world is threatened by climate change. While climate change is global, impacts are local and regional, and vulnerability varies widely across communities, countries, and regions. Climate change awareness has been related to how willingly communities adapt to climate change; thus, identifying communities’ awareness could help to gain insights into communities’ willingness to adopt climate change policy. In this study, we use culturomics to analyze big data from Google™ search queries to group countries based on their awareness, potential willingness, and potential capacity to deal with climate change. We demonstrate that culturomics can be used to allocate countries along a typology gradient, ranging from high-risk and high awareness to low-risk and low awareness, to climate change. Furthermore, we identify a positive correlation between countries’ climate vulnerability and awareness of climate change. As the Paris Agreement establishes a global goal to “enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change,” identifying countries’ potential adaptive capacity to climate impacts is critical. Pairing culturomics insights with climate vulnerability is a novel approach to facilitate international climate change adaptation.

Extreme weather events, such as storms and cyclones, pose dire occupational hazards in marine fishing. Thus, warnings against such events can reduce risks to the life and property of fishing communities. This study is an attempt to assess the factors driving fishermen's decision to respond to weather warnings. Mixed methods, such as exploratory fieldwork, literature review, and focus group discussions, helped in identifying the available weather warnings and hypothesizing the probable factors influencing response to the warnings in the marine fishing community in Maharashtra, India. The plausible drivers of response include perceived potential risk, credibility of the warning and its disseminators, community social capital, and other demographic characteristics. Data from a household survey, comprising 601 fishermen, is used to empirically test the hypotheses. The results suggest that trust in the source and disseminator of the warning is related to higher response rates. There is heterogeneity in the role of community social capital as a motivator to respond. Further, fishermen perceiving traditional information to be more reliable are less likely to respond frequently to the warnings. The findings of the study are relevant for designing interventions which can prompt high response rates to weather warnings from fishermen.

Climate change adaptation is increasingly concerned with how organisations develop capacity to adapt to uncertain futures. A participatory action research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, examined how health and social service organisations developed their organisational adaptive capacity through the use of adaptation decision-support tools. It can be challenging for any organisation to select and apply a decision-support tool, but this is particularly the case where resources and capacities are limited. For most organisations, climate change is only one of a complex set of dynamic stressors they must consider in meeting organisational goals. This paper shows that while decision-support tools can help co-generate knowledge and facilitate customised organisational adaptation processes, for them to be practically helpful for organisations with limited resources and capacities, intensive collaborative and discursive processes are needed to adjust such tools to fit specific organisational contexts and needs. Facilitators and participatory approaches that enable co-inquiry can play a critical role in supplementing scarce resources and initiating adaptation processes that go well beyond the scope and purpose of the decision-support tool used. Organisations working effectively with decision-support tools to adapt to climate change will need to feel ownership of them and have confidence in modifying them to suit their particular adaptation needs and organisational goals.

Assessing regional-scale vulnerability of agricultural systems to climate change and variability is vital in securing food and fiber systems, as well as sustaining rural livelihoods. Farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners rely on science-based, decision-relevant, and localized information to maintain production, ecological viability, and economic returns. This paper synthesizes the collection of research on the future of agricultural production in the Southwestern United States. A variety of assessment methods indicate the diverse impacts and risks across the Southwest, often related to water availability, which drives adaptive measures in this region. Sector- or species-specific adaptive measures have long been practiced in this region and will continue to be necessary to support agricultural production as a regional enterprise. Diversification of crop selection and income source imparts climate resilience. Building upon biophysical vulnerability through incorporating social and economic factors is critical to future adaptation planning efforts. The persistence and adaptive capacity of agriculture in the water-limited Southwest serves as an instructive example for producers outside the region expecting drier and warmer conditions and may offer solutions to reduce future climate impacts.

Summarization: Climate change has repercussions on national security. Yet, no widely accepted definition of climate security exists to date. In this paper, we present a mathematical model that defines and assesses climate security as a function of 37 indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. The model combines the indicators using statistical methods and fuzzy logic which encapsulates the subjective part of the assessment, to derive an overall climate security score from 0 to 1, and then rank 187 countries. A sensitivity analysis points to those indicators with the highest potential to improve climate security and indicates regional priorities for action. It turns out that globally the highest priorities are the economy which is necessary for climate adaptation, population growth which should be contained, political rights, renewable energy use, and sea level rise. Although several results such as the high ranks of Scandinavian countries are intuitive, the model uncovers unexpected facts such as the higher rank of Uruguay than Denmark and Japan or the higher rank of Costa Rica than Italy. However, a closer look at the intermediate results reveals that Uruguay and Costa Rica are far superior to Denmark, Japan, and Italy in the areas of water and energy. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Climatic Change

Vulnerability to climate change was evaluated for three different time periods: 1990, 2000, and 2010. Our objective was to discuss the scope of a multi-temporal assessment of vulnerability. The method used 55 indicators—with emphasis on the agricultural sector in Mexico—of which 27 were updated for the year 2010 and 33 were retrospectively estimated for the year 1990. The results show that in the 20-year study period, the exposure of the municipalities (and inhabitants) has increased, and sensitivity and adaptive capacity have decreased. The number of municipalities vulnerable to climate change declined over the 20-year period. We found that calculating vulnerability by adding exposure and sensitivity and subtracting adaptive capacity (E + S − AC) can lead to unintentional underestimation of total vulnerability. When rating vulnerability, care must be taken in what is reported: the results differ for the number of inhabitants versus the number of municipalities. Our previous published vulnerability evaluation was for the year 2000, so we wanted to evaluate the sensitivity of some variables and the vulnerability formula itself we used in that moment. It is possible to evaluate the vulnerability multi-temporally, which allows to evaluate the sensibility and calibration of the variables and indicators used and the reconsideration of their application.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, re-eutrophication has reemerged as severe problems in Lake Erie. Controlling non-point source (NPS) nutrient pollution from cropland, especially dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), is the key to restore water quality in Lake Erie. To address NPS pollution, previous studies have analyzed the effectiveness of alternative spatially optimal land use and management strategies (represented as agricultural conservation practices (CPs)). However, few studies considered both strategies and have analyzed and compared their sensitivity to expected changes in temperature and precipitation due to climate change and increased greenhouse gas concentrations. In this study, we evaluated impacts of climatic change on the economic efficiency of these strategies for DRP abatement, using an integrated modeling approach that includes a watershed model, an economic valuation component, and a spatial optimization model. A series of climate projections representing relatively high greenhouse gas emission scenarios was developed for the western Lake Erie basin to drive the watershed model. We found that performance of solutions optimized for current climate was degraded significantly under projected future climate conditions. In terms of robustness of individual strategies, CPs alone were more robust to climate change than land use change alone or together with CPs, but relying on CPs alone fails to achieve a high (> 71%) DRP reduction target. A combination of CPs and land use changes was required to achieve policy goals for DRP reductions (targeted at ~ 78%). Our results point to the need for future spatial optimization studies and planning to consider adaptive capacity of conservation actions under a changing climate.

In world climate science, Bangladesh is considered a poster child of vulnerability. The primary stressors that affect the vulnerability of the Bangladeshi population include sea-level rise, biodiversity degradation, saltwater intrusion, desertification, social exclusion, unstable political conditions, and weak governance systems. Governance is an important non-climatic stressor that has not received sufficient attention. Within this framework, this paper explores the impacts of bribery and extortion on livelihoods and adaptive capacity in the face of climate change and argues that corruption significantly reduces the ability to respond to climatic stressors. Findings draw attention to this critical issue in climate change adaptation and international development in general, particularly for developing countries.

Access to climate information has the potential to build adaptive capacity, improve agricultural profitability, and help manage risks. To achieve these benefits, knowledge of the local context is needed to inform information development, delivery, and use. We examine coffee farming in the Jamaican Blue Mountains (BM) to understand farmer livelihoods, opportunities for climate knowledge to benefit coffee production, and the factors that impinge on farmers’ ability to use climate information. Our analysis draws on interviews and 12 focus groups involving 143 participants who largely cultivate small plots. BM farmers currently experience stresses related to climate, coffee leaf rust, and production costs that interrelate concurrently and with time lags. Under conditions that reduce income, BM farmers compensate by adjusting their use of inputs, which can increase their susceptibility to future climate and disease stresses. However, farmers can also decrease impacts of future stressors by more efficiently and effectively allocating their limited resources. In this sense, managing climate, like the other stresses, is an ongoing process. While we identify climate products that can help farmers manage climate risk, the local context presents barriers that argue for interactive climate services that go beyond conventional approaches of information production and delivery. We discuss how dialogs between farmers, extension personnel, and climate scientists can create a foundation from which use can emerge.

The mainstream discourses on global climate change have tended to focus on mitigation and have neglected the adaptive measures, particularly at the local level, even though the local/indigenous people have been considered to be more vulnerable to such change. However, climate change has a distinct local reality—since the way such change is perceived and addressed is linked with the local people and their practices. Although climate change largely affects the lives of the local poor, certain positive effects may also occur for those marginalized people. In other words, many of the indigenous peoples have an adaptive capacity to deal with climate change. Therefore, climate change adaptation has now increasingly gained prominence. In this context, this paper will investigate the impact of climate change at the local level and explain how an indigenous and vulnerable population, the Konda Reddis, respond to such change through cultural adaptation. The paper will focus on the cultural significance of the jeelugu (fishtail palm, Caryota urens) and Konda Reddis’ shift from the jeelugu to the tati (palmyra palm, Borassus flabellifera). I will argue that such a shift is an indication of an adaptation to climate change. I will also maintain that though climate change plays a dominant role in stimulating such adaptation, certain other factors also interact with climatic factors in the adaptation.

Our planet has already committed to climate change and will experience its associated impacts; thus, mitigation along with adaptation strategies cannot be mutually exclusive. Yet, international and national policies to tackle climate change have focused more on mitigation than adaptation. On the other hand, indigenous communities have been continuously adapting to environmental stresses for millennia, including more recent cascading impacts of climate change. Indigenous communities have developed a wealth of information in the form of their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), based on their observations of the obvious linkages between changing climatic conditions and biodiversity. Here, I hypothesize that in harsh environments such as the alpine Himalaya, social systems particularly local institutions that are largely based on TEK are important in improving adaptive capacity by providing social, economic, and ecological security to the community. I provide an insight into the adaptation strategies of two communities that inhabit the alpine zones of the Sikkim Himalaya, in India. We address two broad questions: (1) How are indigenous communities in the vulnerable alpine zones of the Himalaya adapting to the complex challenges posed by climate change particularly in conjunction with their indigenous governing institution? We give examples of adaptation strategies and broadly categorize them into six groups, namely (a) Institutional capital, (b) Rationing, (c) Forecasting, (d) Mobility, (e) Economic diversification, and (f) Communal pooling. (2) How can TEK be integrated with climate change sciences for improving data availability and better policy? I conclude with a framework that uses a holistic approach complementing the rigor of science with the wealth of TEK to suggest pathways for improved policy response to climate change.

This paper distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital to assess their roles for individual farmers’ adaptation strategies taken through technology adoption. Based on primary data collected in Langcang River (LCR) basin area in southwestern China, the paper finds: (1) adaptation measures have been widely taken by surveyed households, but non-infrastructure-based measures are more prevalent than infrastructure-based measures and (2) surveyed households have strong social capital while having weak bridging social capital. Their bonding social capital has significantly positive relationship with their adaptation decisions, but bridging social capital does not have such statistically significant relationship. It recommends that the governments contemplate carefully how to help the poor to get a good combination of bonding and bridging social capital when designing policies to help the rural poor to improve their long-term adaptive capacity and achieve sustainable rural development.

Understanding the factors that limit species distributions has become increasingly important in the face of rapid climate change. Many approaches have been used to predict responses of species and communities to new environmental challenges, including species distribution modelling, glasshouse and growth cabinet experiments, and small-scale field manipulations, all of which have both advantages and limitations. Here, we review the use of a powerful, direct method to predict how species and communities will respond to the changing climate: the field transplant experiment. We discuss how transplant experiments can elucidate the factors that limit species distributions; disentangle the role of genetic change vs. phenotypic plasticity in species’ responses; and improve understanding of the role of species interactions in driving community change. Several generalisations about potential species’ responses to climate change are emerging from these studies, including the critical role of specific life stages in response to warming trends, the role of natural enemies and new hosts in limiting or promoting adaptive capacity, and the role of niche saturation in conferring community stability at a functional guild level. Transplant experiments have also confirmed likely mechanisms of recent range shifts and highlighted the potential for some modelling exercises to overestimate future range changes. With the prospect that accelerating warming over the next few decades will increase extinction rates and accelerate ecosystem degradation, we urge researchers to utilise this powerful but underused method more widely.

The Northern Great Plains (NGP) region of the USA—which comprises Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska—is a largely rural area that provides numerous ecosystem services, including livestock products, cultural services, and conservation of biological diversity. The region contains 25% of the Nation’s beef cattle and approximately one-third of the confined beef cattle, as well as the largest remaining native prairie in the US—the Northern Mixedgrass Prairie. With rising atmospheric CO2, the NGP is projected to experience warmer and longer growing seasons, greater climatic variability, and more extreme events (e.g., increased occurrence of large precipitation events). These climatic changes may affect livestock production both directly via physiological impacts on animals and indirectly via modifications to forage, invasion of undesirable plants, and increased exposure to parasites. This raises concerns about the vulnerability of grazing livestock operations and confined livestock operations to projected changes in mid- (2050) and late- (2085) twenty-first century climate. Our objectives are to (1) describe the NGP’s exposure to temperature and precipitation trends, inter-annual variability, and extreme events; (2) evaluate the sensitivity of beef cattle production to direct and indirect effects imposed by these projected climatic changes; and (3) provide a typology of adaptation strategies to minimize adverse consequences of projected changes and maximize beneficial consequences. Agricultural managers have developed considerable adaptive capacity to contend with environmental and economic variability. However, projected climatic changes, especially the increased frequency and magnitude of weather extremes, will require even greater adaptive capacity to maintain viable production systems. Consequently, regional vulnerability to projected climatic changes will be determined not only by ecological responses but also by the adaptive capacity of individual managers. Adaptive capacity in the NGP will differ from other regions, in part because projections suggest some opportunities for increased livestock production. Adaptations in both grazing and confined beef cattle systems will require enhanced decision-making skills capable of integrating biophysical, social, and economic considerations. Social learning networks that support integration of experimental and experiential knowledge—such as lessons learned from early adopters and involvement with science-based organizations—can help enhance decision-making and climate adaptation planning. Many adaptations have already been implemented by a subset of producers in this region, providing opportunities for assessment, further development, and greater adoption. Context-specific decision-making can also be enhanced through science-management partnerships, which aim to build adaptive capacity that recognizes multiple production and conservation/environmental goals.

Climate change effects are already apparent in some Southwestern US forests and are expected to intensify in the coming decades, via direct (temperature, precipitation) and indirect (fire, pests, pathogens) stressors. We grouped Southwestern forests into ten major types to assess their climate exposure by 2070 using two global climate models (GCMs) and two emission scenarios representing wetter or drier conditions and current or lowered emission levels. We estimate future climate exposure over forests covering 370,144 km2 as the location and proportion of each type projected to experience climate conditions that fall outside 99% of those they currently occupy. By late century, 27–77% is climatically exposed under wetter or drier current emission levels, while lowered emission levels produce 10–50% exposure, respectively. This difference points to the benefits of reducing emissions from the RCP8.5 to the RCP4.5 track, with regard to forest retention. Exposed areas common to all four climate futures include central Arizona and the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Vulnerability assessments also comprise sensitivity and adaptive capacity, which we scored subjectively by forest type according to the number of key stressors they are sensitive to and the resilience conferred by life history traits of their dominant tree species. Under the 2070 RCP8.5 emissions, four forest types are critically and six are highly vulnerable under the hotter GCM; and eight are highly and two moderately vulnerable under the wetter GCM. We discuss forest management adaptation strategies and the barriers to and co-benefits of such plans.

In this essay, we explore the contribution of establishing off-grid community micro-hydropower systems in the Dominican Republic to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Forty-five micro-hydropower systems were set up over 16 years that are sustainably and autonomously managed by the local groups and provide access to electricity to communities in remote areas while reducing CO2 emissions and favoring carbon sequestration. In addition to mitigating climate change by avoiding emissions and reforestation of more than 28,000 t of CO2 per year, these initiatives have improved the adaptive capacity of the local communities through contributing to biodiversity protection, climate policy development, and governance; as well as enhancing the wellbeing of families through increased savings, improved education, and increased income generation opportunities. We elaborate the key factors for success and considerations for meeting future challenges.

Worldwide cities are at the forefront of tackling climate change; however, it is not clear to what extent they are prepared for the challenge, particularly in the context of lower income countries, where the need for action is urgent. In this context, many of cities struggle to develop evidence-based approaches to assess their current and future capacity to deal with climate impacts and inform the design of policies to respond in the short/long term. Based both on extensive field research carried out in Brazilian cities and on urban adaptation literature, we develop and test the Urban Adaptation Index (UAI) that cities can use to assess their current adaptive capacity in a realistic/achievable way. The index includes 26 indicators and focuses on a set of public policies to support interventions connected to adaptation: housing, urban mobility, sustainable agriculture, environmental management, and climate impact response. To make the UAI more usable/accessible, we use empirical data that is publicly available, and develop an approach that can be implemented with resources already available in many Brazilian cities. We illustrate the UAI usability by applying the index to the 645 municipalities of the state of São Paulo. Results show that more than half of the municipalities present low UAI ratings; however, municipalities located in metropolitan regions, where the majority of the population live, tend to have higher ratings. Practitioners agreed on the value of the UAI as a tool to monitor the current situation and changes regarding local potential capacity to adapt to climate change.