Climate Change Response at the Farm Level: A Review of Farmers’ Awareness and Adaptation Strategies in Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of farmers' awareness and a typology of adaptation strategies undertaken in order to combat climate change at the farm-level in developing countries. The review suggests that the extent to which farmers are aware of climate change is uneven, and the link between perception and action is often unclear. Farmers adopt a range of strategies from financial responses, to agricultural changes, to religious and cultural strategies, to the use of local and wider support networks. However, whether these actions are adaptation or coping strategies is debatable. Response to climate change has both spatial and temporal dimensions; and a host of socio-economic factors (e.g., lack of resources, gender or cultural identities) inf luence adaptation strategies. Finally, these adaptation strategies can be seen as nested within broadly defined livelihood strategies.

Farmers' Resilience towards Climate Change Related Disasters (CCRDs): The Case of Barangay Mabalbalino, San Carlos City, Pangasinan

“…As known, once citizens moved out from the place to work, most of them started residing in cities and returned to barangay if there were only occasions or other events. In the study of Harmer and Rahman (2014) entitled Climate Change at the Farm-level Adaptation strategies in Developing Countries, they found out that one of the most prominent strategies of farmers' adaptations on climate change, was diversification of farming and migration to local or international.…”

The Lived Experience of Climate Change

“…Harmer and Rahman (2014), for example, review how farmers in these countries are forced continually to adapt within whatever constraints pertain. In doing so they may locate their responses within broader livelihood strategies, including 'normal climate variations', rather than as adaptation to climate change per se.…”

Smallholder Rice Farmers’ Adaptation Capacity to Climate Change in the Bawku Zone of Ghana

“…technologies, religious and cultural customs, and communal support [4], [5]. One study examined how some American farmers changed planting time and adopted drought resistant crop varieties that were resistant to pest attack [6].…”