Linking Climate Change Awareness, Climate Change Perceptions and Subsequent Adaptation Options among Farmers

Abstract

Several studies have reported farmers’ perceptions of climate change, but there is inadequate knowledge available on the farm households’ climate change awareness (CCA) in Pakistan. This study was undertaken to assess farmers’ CCA. For this purpose, the study collected the data from southern and central Punjab, Pakistan, through a purposively multistage random sampling technique. Binary logit and odds ratio were used to analyse the data. The analysis of the study shows that the majority of respondents were aware of climate change but had differing perceptions of climate change. This research showed that 70.8% of farmers are aware of climate change and reported their awareness level on winter and summer rainfall and temperature, the growing season length (GSL) of crops, the sea level rise, and the causes of climate changes and conceptual understanding of it while persistently denying climate change. However, many farmers did not perceive decreasing winter (48%) and summer (31.2%) precipitation, the majority of the farmers could not perceive in the GSL of summer (63.2%) and winter (64.4%) crops, while few did not notice increased winter (36.4%) and summer (33.6%) temperature, respectively. Financial and non-financial factors such as education (1.16), experience (1.07), distance to markets (1.07), non-agricultural income (2.83), access to agricultural credit (0.29) and marketing of produce (6.10), access to extension services (3.87) and the number of adaptation strategies (1.30) were pointedly related to farm households’ CCA. These odds values in the parenthesis show that the likelihood of CCA increases/decreases as these determinants increase. Moreover, the results of the study show that CCA is a significant predictor of adaptation to climate change. Main adaptation strategies opted for by farmers include changing crop variety and type, changing planting dates, tree plantation, increasing/changing fertilizer, soil and water conservation, off-farm income and diversification. Further, the study finds that some farmers did not perceive climate change as it takes time to be visible, but they are aware of climate change. Therefore, there is a need to reshape the households’ perception of climate change and enhance farmers’ CCA through existing extension services.