Drought and the future of rural communities: Opportunities and challenges for climate change adaptation in regional Victoria,Australia

Australia's vulnerability to climate variability and change has been highlighted by the recent drought (i.e. the Big Dry or Millennium Drought), and also recent flooding across much of eastern Australia during 2011 and 2012. There is also the possibility that the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts may increase due to anthropogenic climate change, stressing the need for robust drought adaptation strategies. This study investigates the socio-economic impacts of drought, past and present drought adaptation measures, and the future adaptation strategies required to deal with projected impacts of climate change. The qualitative analysis presented records the actual experiences of drought and other climatic extremes and helps advance knowledge of how best to respond and adapt to such conditions, and how this might vary between different locations, sectors and communities. It was found that more effort is needed to address the changing environment and climate, by shifting from notions of ‘drought-as-crisis’ towards acknowledging the variable availability of water and that multi-year droughts should not be unexpected, and may even become more frequent. Action should also be taken to revalue the farming enterprise as critical to our environmental, economic and cultural well-being and there was also strong consensus that the value of water should be recognised in a more meaningful way (i.e. not just in economic terms). Finally, across the diverse stakeholders involved in the research, one point was consistently reiterated: that ‘it's not just drought’. Exacerbating the issues of climate impacts on water security and supply is the complexity of the agriculture industry, global economics (in particular global markets and the recent/ongoing global financial crisis), and demographic changes (decreasing and ageing populations) which are currently occurring across most rural communities. The social and economic issues facing rural communities are not just a product of drought or climate change – to understand them as such would underestimate the extent of the problems and inhibit the ability to coordinate the holistic, cross-agency approach needed for successful climate change adaptation in rural communities.     

Household and community responses to impacts of climate change in the rural hills of Nepal

The research was designed to answer how households and local communities in rural Nepal are responding to the impacts of climate change. Using four villages as case study units, a mixed method approach was adopted in a multi-scaled process carried out at community, district and national levels. The research found that adaptation practices being adopted differ according to household well-being and are largely governed by access to education, information and resources within the community. Responses such as livelihood and income diversification, internal migration, share cropping, taking consumption loans, use of alternative energy and use of bio-pesticides were found to mostly vary according to well-being status of the interviewees. Development of adaptation plans, strategies and support mechanisms should take account of the different adaptation practices and needs of households. If such individual situations are not considered, adaptation responses may be ineffective or even be maladaptive and increase vulnerability. The research also found that the autonomous, unplanned and reactive nature of adaptation practices chosen by rural communities can contribute to further inequity and unequal power relations. The knowledge generated from this research contributes to understanding of how climate change contributes to vulnerability, but also how local practices and lack of an effective climate policy or response measures may magnify the effects of many existing drivers of vulnerability in terms of maladaptation and increasing social inequalities.     

Virtue and vulnerability: Discourses on women, gender and climate change

In the limited literature on gender and climate change, two themes predominate - women as vulnerable or virtuous in relation to the environment. Two viewpoints become obvious: women in the South will be affected more by climate change than men in those countries and that men in the North pollute more than women. The debates are structured in specific ways in the North and the South and the discussion in the article focuses largely on examples from Sweden and India. The article traces the lineage of the arguments to the women, environment and development discussions, examining how they recur in new forms in climate debates. Questioning assumptions about women's vulnerability and virtuousness, it highlights how a focus on women's vulnerability or virtuousness can deflect attention from inequalities in decision-making. By reiterating statements about poor women in the South and the pro-environmental women of the North, these assumptions reinforce North-South biases. Generalizations about women's vulnerability and virtuousness can lead to an increase in women's responsibility without corresponding rewards. There is need to contextualise debates on climate change to enable action and to respond effectively to its adverse effects in particular places.     

Examining barriers and opportunities for sustainable adaptation to climate change in Interior Alaska

Human adaptation to climate change is comprised of “adjustments” in response to (or anticipation of) climatic impacts. Adaptation does not necessarily imply favorable or equitable change, nor does it automatically imply sustainable use of ecosystems. “Sustainable adaptation” in this case implies strategic, collective action to respond to or anticipate harmful climate change to reduce disruption to key resource flows and adverse effects on general well-being. This research examined social-ecological system responses to recent warming trends in the remote northwest region of Interior Alaska using a unique vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessment (VA) approach that integrated indigenous observations and understanding of climate (IC) with western social and natural sciences. The study found that Alaska Native communities that were historically highly mobile and flexible across the landscape for subsistence hunting are increasingly restricted by the institutional rigidity of the regulatory system for wildlife and subsistence management. This has resulted in negative impacts to game harvest access and success threatening food security and community well-being. This suggests that policies limiting the ability of natural resource-dependent societies to be flexible, diversify, or innovate can threaten livelihoods and exacerbate vulnerability. Nevertheless, opportunities for sustainable adaptation exist where wildlife management is adaptive and includes an understanding of and response to climate variability and slow-onset climate change with the human dimensions of subsistence hunting for more effective “in-season” management.     

Rancher and farmer perceptions of climate change in Nevada, USA

Farming and ranching communities in arid lands are vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. We surveyed Nevada ranchers and farmers (n?=?481) during 2009–2010 to assess climate change related knowledge, assumptions, and perceptions. The large majority of this group agreed that we are in a period of climate change; however, only 29 % of them believed that human activity is playing a significant role. Female ranchers and farmers hold more scientifically accurate knowledge about climate change than do their male counterparts, regardless of Democratic or Republican affiliation. Partisan affiliation, political ideology, and gender have strong impacts on climate change knowledge and perceptions. Republican, conservative and male rural residents view climate change as a low national priority, less important to themselves, and less harmful to their communities. Female ranchers and farmers are more concerned about the negative impacts of climate change. We found that only 4 % of our subjects (n?=?299) attribute local environment changes to climate change or global warming. The knowledge gained from this study will help researchers and natural resource managers understand how to best communicate about climate change with rural communities, and support policy makers in identifying potentially effective adaptation and mitigation policies and outreach programs.     

Adaptation,adaptive capacity and vulnerability

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs.     

A proposal for a new scenario framework to support research and assessment in different climate research communities

In this paper, we propose a scenario framework that could provide a scenario “thread” through the different climate research communities (climate change – vulnerability, impact, and adaptation - and mitigation) in order to support assessment of mitigation and adaptation strategies and climate impacts. The scenario framework is organized around a matrix with two main axes: radiative forcing levels and socio-economic conditions. The radiative forcing levels (and the associated climate signal) are described by the new Representative Concentration Pathways. The second axis, socio-economic developments comprises elements that affect the capacity for mitigation and adaptation, as well as the exposure to climate impacts. The proposed scenarios derived from this framework are limited in number, allow for comparison across various mitigation and adaptation levels, address a range of vulnerability characteristics, provide information across climate forcing and vulnerability states and span a full century time scale. Assessments based on the proposed scenario framework would strengthen cooperation between integrated-assessment modelers, climate modelers and vulnerability, impact and adaptation researchers, and most importantly, facilitate the development of more consistent and comparable research within and across these research communities.     

农业对气候变化的脆弱性

随着对气候变化研究的不断深入,气候变化脆弱性问题也得到了更多的关注。相对于水资源、森林等其他自然生态系统,农业受气候变化的影响最大,科学地评价其对气候变化的脆弱性,对于制定合理有效的适应对策具有重要意义。从气候变化脆弱性与农业对气候变化脆弱性的定义、研究内容和评价方法等角度综述了研究进展,在此基础上分析了目前该领域存在的问题,包括情景应用、方法和不确定性等方面,并展望了未来脆弱性评价的发展方向。     

Vulnerability and adaptive capacity in forestry in northern Europe: a Swedish case study

Climate change is likely to present new and substantially unpredictable challenges to human societies. The prospect is of particular concern at the local and regional levels, since vulnerability and adaptive capacity are location-specific and many decisions regarding climate-induced risks are made at those levels. In this light, one is compelled to survey stakeholders’ understandings of their situation and perceived problems. Assessments should also include the context of other ongoing changes, such as globalisation, that will impact communities and exacerbate their vulnerabilities. This paper presents an assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity in the forestry sector in the Pite River basin in northern Sweden. The study was carried out using a multi-method design encompassing literature surveys, interviews with stakeholders, and stakeholder meetings. The paper concludes that while climate change will have an impact on the region, its effect will be superseded by that of broader socio-economic changes. The results illustrate the need to understand local and regional perceptions of adaptation in formulating appropriate policy measures.     

Resettlement and climate change vulnerability: Evidence from rural China

The literature on migration and climate change has become increasingly attuned to the role of climatic factors in already complex migration dynamics, and amid different kinds of mobility. However, to date little evidence has been provided of the relationship between resettlement and climate change, including the degree to which resettlement may shape the vulnerability of households or communities. In this article we ask: is there any evidence that resettlement may be a driver of vulnerability and if so, what factors make resettled households more vulnerable when compared to non-resettled households? These questions are considered with reference to new evidence drawn from a livelihoods-based vulnerability analysis in a drought-prone, poverty county in China’s Shanxi Province, which encompassed households involved in local poverty resettlement programs. Evidence of the characteristics of resettled households compared to non-resettled households shows that resettlement adversely impacts on the household asset base, particularly in terms of financial and natural capital. It may therefore be a driver of vulnerability. At a time when the Chinese government is repackaging resettlement as a climate change adaptation measure, this article provides evidence that resettlement as it is currently practiced has the potential to amplify rather than alleviate household vulnerability to climate change.     

Assessing community vulnerability: A study of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in British Columbia, Canada

Arguing that community-based assessments of vulnerability to climate change are congruent with the scale at which policy action takes place, this paper presents an assessment of vulnerability conducted in forest-based communities surrounded by a catastrophic outbreak of forest disease. Our assessment includes measures of several dimensions of vulnerability, developed using an interdisciplinary and participatory research process. We find that for some communities vulnerability represents a high level of economic risk, while for others risk is exacerbated by institutional limitations. We also find that community perceptions of risk and bio-physical assessments differ widely for communities anticipating future outbreaks of disease.     

Well-being and environmental change in the arctic: a synthesis of selected research from Canada’s International Polar Year program

The social and cultural dimensions of arctic environmental change were explored through Canada??s International Polar Year (IPY) research program. Drawing on concepts of vulnerability, resilience and human security, we discuss preliminary results of 15 IPY research projects (of 52) which dealt with the effects and responses of northern communities to issues of ecological variability, natural resource development and climate change. This paper attempts to determine whether the preliminary results of these projects have contributed to the IPY program goal of building knowledge about well-being in the arctic. The projects were diverse in focus and approach but together offer a valuable pan-northern perspective on many themes including land and resource use, food security, poverty and best practices of northern engagement. Case study research using self-reported measures suggests individual views of their own well-being differ from regional and territorial standardized statistics on quality of life. A large body of work was developed around changes in land and resource use. A decline in land and resource use in some areas and consequent concerns for food security, are directly linked to the effects of climate change, particularly in coastal areas where melting sea ice, erratic weather events and changes in the stability of landscapes (e.g., erosion, slumping) are leading to increased risks for land users. Natural resource development, while creating some new economic opportunities, may be compounding rather than offsetting such stresses of environmental change for vulnerable populations. While the IPY program has contributed to our understanding of some aspects of well-being in the arctic, many other issues of social, economic, cultural and political significance, including those unrelated to environmental change, remain poorly understood.     

Social risk perceptions of climate change: A case study of farmers and agricultural advisors in northern California

Crop and livestock farmers must respond to climate change, including a range of physical and cultural impacts and risks. In rural northern California, farmers face extreme drought and catastrophic wildfires with increasing frequency. I draw on an extended case study of farmers and agricultural advisors in Siskiyou County to understand how rural agriculturalists perceive risks when navigating climate change discourses. While farmers are changing their management practices in response to the physical effects of climate change, many perceive substantial social risks within their communities if they align themselves publicly with climate change beliefs or actions. Perceived social consequences included loss of access to the benefits of membership in formal and informal farming groups. Efforts focused on educating or convincing farmers of climate science may, in some contexts, increase rather than decrease the perceived social risks of climate action. The framing of climate policies, programs, and practices – especially by public agricultural advisors like Cooperative Extension Advisors and local USDA staff (e.g., Farm Service Agency) – is important not only for increasing farmer participation, but also for reducing perceived social risks associated with climate change. Interventions that focus on livelihood impacts and validate existing land stewardship-oriented values have more potential to increase the pace and scale of climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture.     

Knowledge co-production for Indigenous adaptation pathways: Transform post-colonial articulation complexes to empower local decision-making

Co-production between scientific and Indigenous knowledge has been identified as useful to generating adaptation pathways with Indigenous peoples, who are attached to their traditional lands and thus highly exposed to the impacts of climate change. However, ignoring the complex and contested histories of nation-state colonisation can result in naïve adaptation plans that increase vulnerability. Here, through a case study in central Australia, we investigate the conditions under which co-production between scientific and Indigenous knowledge can support climate change adaptation pathways among place-attached Indigenous communities. A research team including scientists, Ltyentye Apurte Rangers and other staff from the Central Land Council first undertook activities to co-produce climate change presentations in the local Arrernte language; enable community members to identify potential adaptation actions; and implement one action, erosion control. Second, we reflected on the outcomes of these activities in order to unpack deeper influences. Applying the theory of articulation complexes, we show how ideologies, institutions and economies have linked Indigenous societies and the establishing Australian nation-state since colonisation. The sequence of complexes characterised as frontier, mission, pastoral, land-rights, community-development and re-centralisation, which is current, have both enabled and constrained adaptation options. We found knowledge co-production generates adaptation pathways when: (1) effective methods for knowledge co-production are used, based on deeply respectful partnerships, cultural governance and working together through five co-production tasks—prepare, communicate, discuss, bring together and apply; (2) Indigenous people have ongoing connection to their traditional territories to maintain their Indigenous knowledge; (3) the relationship between the Indigenous people and the nation-state empowers local decision-making and learning, which requires and creates consent, trust, accountability, reciprocity, and resurgence of Indigenous culture, knowledge and practices. These conditions foster the emergence of articulation complexes that enable the necessary transformative change from the colonial legacies. Both these conditions and our approach are likely to be relevant for place-attached Indigenous peoples across the globe in generating climate adaptation pathways.     

Agrarian stress and climate change in the Eastern Gangetic Plains: Gendered vulnerability in a stratified social formation

This paper reviews the complex impact of climate change on gender relations and associated vulnerability on the Eastern Gangetic Plains of Nepal and India. Field research has identified that gendered vulnerability to climate change is intricately connected to local and macro level political economic processes. Rather than being a single driver of change, climate is one among several stresses on agriculture, alongside a broader set of non-climatic processes. While these pressures are linked to large scale political–economic processes, the response on the ground is mediated by the local level relations of class and caste, creating stratified patterns of vulnerability. The primary form of gendered vulnerability in the context of agrarian stress emerges from male out-migration, which has affected the distribution of labour and resources. While migration occurs amongst all socio-economic groups, women from marginal farmer and tenant households are most vulnerable. While the causes of migration are only indirectly associated with climate change, migration itself is rendering women who are left behind from marginal households, more vulnerable to ecological shocks such as droughts due to the sporadic flow of income and their reduced capacity for investment in off-farm activities. It is clear that policies and initiatives to address climate change in stratified social formations such as the Eastern Gangetic Plains, will be ineffective without addressing the deeper structural intersections between class, caste and gender.     

Agrometeorological Research and Applications Needed to Prepare Agriculture and Forestry to 21st Century Climate Change

The adaptation of agriculture and forestry to the climate of the twenty-first century supposes that research projects will be conducted cooperatively between meteorologists, agronomists, soil scientists, hydrologists, and modellers. To prepare for it, it is appropriate first of all to study the variations in the climate of the past using extensive, homogenised series of meteorological or phenological data. General circulation models constitute the basic tool in order to predict future changes in climate. They will be improved, and the regionalisation techniques used for downscaling climate predictions will also be made more efficient. Crop simulation models using input data from the general circulation models applied at the regional level ought to be the favoured tools to allow the extrapolation of the major trends on yield, consumption of water, fertilisers, pesticides, the environment and rural development. For this, they have to be validated according to the available agronomical data, particularly the available phenological series on cultivated crops. In addition, climate change would have impact on crop diseases and parasites, as well as on weeds. Very few studies have been carried out in this field. It is also necessary to quantify in a more accurate way the stocks and fluxes of carbon in large forest ecosystems, simulate their future, and assess the vulnerability of the various forest species to a change in climate. This is all the more important in that some propagate species choices must be made in the course of the next ten years in plantations which will experience changed climate. More broadly speaking, we shall have not only to try hard to research new agricultural and forestry practices which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions or promote the storage of carbon, but it will also be indispensable to prepare the adaptation of numerous rural communities for the climate change (with special reference to least developed countries in tropical areas, where malnutrition is a common threat). This can be accomplished with a series of new environmental management practices suited to the new climatic order.     

Multipurpose agroforestry as a climate change resiliency option for farmers: an example of local adaptation in Vietnam

Increasing frequency, intensity and duration of severe weather events are posing major challenges to global food security and livelihoods of rural people. Agriculture has evolved through adaptation to local circumstances for thousands of years. Local experience in responding to severe weather conditions, accumulated over generations and centuries, is valuable for developing adaptation options to current climate change. This study aimed to: (i) identify tree species that reduce vulnerability of cropping systems under climate variability; and (ii) develop a method for rapidly assessing vulnerability and exploring strategies of smallholder farmers in rural areas exposed to climate variability. Participatory Rural Appraisal methods in combination with Geographical Information Systems tools and statistical analysis of meteorological data were used to evaluate local vulnerability to climate change and to investigate local adaptation measures in two selected villages in Vietnam, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The low predictability of severe weather events makes food crops, especially grain production, insecure. This study shows that while rice and rain-fed crops suffered over 40 % yield losses in years of extreme drought or flood, tree-based systems and cattle were less affected. 13 tree species performed well under the harsh local climate conditions in home and forest gardens to provide income, food, feed and other environmental benefits. Thus, this research suggests that maintenance and enhancement of locally evolved agroforestry systems, with high resilience and multiple benefits, can contribute to climate change adaptation.     

Procedural vulnerability: Understanding environmental change in a remote indigenous community

The challenge of reaching common understanding of the processes and significance of environmental change amounts to a procedural vulnerability in climate change research that hinders successfully translating knowledge into equitable and effective adaptation policy. This article presents findings from research with Indigenous participants in West Arnhem, Australia, and identifies a procedural vulnerability to climate change research, where perceptions of change and their meaning have their context in Dreaming that supersedes and parallels Western scientific discourses of hazard and risk, but that are marginalised in studies and policies on climate change. This paper argues that moves to adapt remote Indigenous Australian communities to climate change risk missing the mark if they (a) assume that a strong reliance on particular ecosystem configurations makes Indigenous cultures universally vulnerable to environmental change, (b) do not recognise cosmologically embedded risks that are determined by Indigenous capacity to take care of country, and (c) do not recognise colonisation as an ongoing disaster in Indigenous Nations, and therefore treat secondary disasters such as poverty, ill health and welfare dependence as primary contributors to high climate change vulnerability. Procedural vulnerabilities contribute to policy failure, and in Australian contexts pose a risk of conceiving solutions to climate change vulnerability that involve moving people out of the way of environmental risks as they are conceived within colonial traditions, while moving them into the way of risks as conceived through the eyes of remote Indigenous communities. This research joins recent publications that encourage researchers and policy-makers to epistemologically ground proof risk assessments and to listen and engage in conversations that create ways of ‘seeing with both eyes’, while not being blind to the hazards of colonisation.     

Vulnerability of Himalayan transhumant communities to climate change

Climate change vulnerability depends on who you are, where you are and what you do. The indigenous communities who primarily depend on natural resources for subsistence livelihoods are among the first and most affected by climate change. Climate models have predicted pronounced warming in high altitude regions of the Himalayas. The transhumant communities of the Himalayas follow traditional lifestyles based on seasonal livestock rearing and subsistence agriculture. There is however, no information on how vulnerable transhumant communities are to climate change, and how vulnerability of transhumant herders differs across the mountainous areas of Nepal. Based on semi-structured interviews with transhumant herders and using the IPCC climate change vulnerability framework, this study assessed and compared the vulnerability of transhumant communities from three districts representing Eastern, Central and Western mountainous region of Nepal. The results showed that the livelihood vulnerability and the climate change vulnerability differ across sites; both of them having lowest index values in the Central region. The vulnerability dimensions viz. exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are largely influenced by diversity in livelihood strategies, income sources and crops, and access to food, water and health facilities. The findings will inform the design of policies and programmes to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity of indigenous communities in general and the transhumant communities of the Himalayas in particular.     

Values,climate change,and implications for adaptation: Evidence from two communities in Labrador,Canada

Local material and symbolic values have to date remained underrepresented in climate change research and policy and this gap is particularly salient in places that have been identified as at significant risk from climate change. In such places, the dominant approach to understanding the effects of climate change has been centred on vulnerability; it has highlighted the social determinants of vulnerability and the differential and uneven distribution of effects. This approach cannot, however, illuminate the diverse and nuanced meanings people attach to specific aspects of their way of life, how the changing climate might affect these, and what this implies for adaptation. To address this gap, this empirical study uses the concept of values, defined as trans-situational conceptions of the desirable that give meaning to behaviour and events, and influence perception and interpretation of situations and events. We develop a set of values from 53 qualitative interviews in two remote communities in subarctic easternmost Canada. It draws on these values to frame how effects of climate change, specifically intangible and subjective effects, are felt, and how responses to them are imagined by those affected. The article argues that values are crucial in shaping perception of climate impacts and adaptation to them. Distinct values, such as tradition, freedom, harmony, safety, and unity shape different interpretations and meaning of impacts, and lead to distinct views on how to adapt to these. Conflicting and competing values can act as barriers to adaptation. The findings imply that adaptation research and policy need to address values explicitly if efforts for planned adaptation are to be perceived as legitimate and effective by those affected by the changing climate.