Abstract
Climate change is a serious threat to the sustainability of global agriculture and food supply that necessitates taking appropriate action for building resilient food production systems and preserving rural economies. In this regard, farmers’ beliefs and concerns about the effects of climate change on agriculture may influence their adoption of adaptation and mitigation practices to address this emerging issue. This work was undertaken to evaluate farmers’ level of concern about climate change in the Jazan province of Saudi Arabia. The study also explored the role of various socioeconomic indicators in shaping farmers’ concerns and highlights various capacity-building initiatives that can be applied at the community level for effective adaptation. Ordered logistic regression was used to study the relationship between farmers’ level of concern and their need for capacity-building initiatives to tackle climate change. Results indicated that insect infestation is the farmers’ top concern, followed by higher crop-diseases incidence and drought. Regression analysis revealed that farmers’ income is a major factor that reduces their concern for insect infestation and crop disease while increases concern for drought. Credit access and information availability have a mixed impact on the farmers’ concern level. Capacity-building initiatives deemed necessary included establishing frequent contacts with extension personnel, timely warnings on droughts and other natural hazards, the training of farmers and extension workers, easy credit facilities, improvement in rural infrastructure and creation of awareness to address specific concern stimulus.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilClimate change is a serious global issue with implications in every domain of human life [1,2,3]
The first sub-section provides the ranking of concerns, beliefs, and perceived/implemented strategies, while the second sub-section gives summary statistics of variables used in the study, while the third sub-section highlights the role of these factors in shaping the concerns of the sampled respondents, and the last sub-section presents impacts of climate change concerns over farmers’ capacity building needs
There were a number of climate change concerns identified from the previous studies and the respondents were asked to rank each of the climate change concern on a five-point likert scale from 1 to 5
Summary
Climate change is a serious global issue with implications in every domain of human life [1,2,3]. The evidence suggests that global warming and a change in precipitation patterns will be experienced as a result of ongoing change in the climate. Shifts in seasonal water availability throughout the year are likely to aggravate different regions [5]. It is predicted that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like drought and flooding will increase given weaker coping capacity and poor adaptation planning in developing countries [6,7]. Many studies have predicted a range of harmful impacts due to climate change that potentially threaten global agricultural systems and food security on a fundamental level [3,8,9]. A greater proportion of the population is projected to experience the potential iations
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