Climatic and socio-economic risks perceptions and adaptation strategies among livestock family farmers in the Pampa biome

Abstract

In the context of the crisis of industrial modernity, adaptive capacity to new climatic and social-economic risks depends on the study of the perceptions and understanding that the involved actors have of those risks. Through interviews with family farmers from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this paper describes how they perceive and respond to social-economic and climatic risks. Results confirm that social and perceptive barriers limit the understanding of climatic risks, which are experienced gradually and in the long term. Accordingly, farmers are not farseeing ("clarividente") actors, and are thus unable to accurately foresee future climatic scenarios. On the other hand, beef producers from the South American Pampas do perceive family, economic and institutional risks threatening their productive activities and their livelihoods in a more direct, short-term manner, and do act to face them. This study confirms that the passage from risky situations to an effective perception of the risk is conditioned by social and cognitive barriers, which negatively affects the management of global change-related conflicts in contemporary societies.