Climate Change Awareness, Perceived Impacts, and Adaptation from Farmers’ Experience and Behavior: a Triple-Loop Review
The eiLab carried out a systematic review to identify the current research trends and set the future research agenda on climate change awareness, perceived impacts and adaptive capacity from farmers’ experiences and behavior.
Individuals and communities socially construct risk, and societies with greater risk perception may be more apt to mobilize or adapt to emergent threats like climatic change. Increasing climate change awareness is often considered necessary in the first stages of the adaptation process to manage its impacts and reduce overall vulnerability. Since agriculture is affected by climate change in several ways, farmers can provide first-hand observations to reinforce adaptation options.
In the study published in Regional Climate Change, the authors analysed a portfolio of 435 articles from 2010 to 2020 to identify publication trends and influential work, delineate the mental structure of farmers’ beliefs and concerns, and point out main research gaps. The comprehensive analysis reported 1) farmers’ socio-demographics characteristics influencing farmers’ perceptions, 2) awareness and changing climate evidence due to human activity, 3) the main perceived effects (rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events), 4) the most relevant adaptation measures (crop changing and soil/water conservation techniques) and 5) factors and barriers limiting adaptation (lack of information, credit, and expertness).
The review outlines the main gaps and their drivers to help future researchers, managers, and decision makers to prioritize their actions according to farmers’ concerns.
Read more here: Ricart S., Gandolfi C., Castelletti A. (2023). Climate change awareness, perceived impacts, and adaptation from farmers’ experience and behavior: a triple-loop review, Regional Environmental Change, 23, 82. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02078-3
