Abstract
Innovative approaches could enhance scientific insights into how climate change affects mountain ecosystems and livelihoods and enrich climate action. Using an inter- and transdisciplinary approach in a remote tropical dry forest region of the Andes in southern Ecuador, this article combines local knowledge about climate change and adaptation, based on perceptions and experiences, with quantitative climate measurements. Our theoretical framework is based on the concept of vulnerability and sustainable livelihoods perspectives. Methodologically, we draw on the Participatory Rural Appraisal approach. Participatory workshops and qualitative interviews were carried out in the canton of Macara between 2015 and 2017. Local and regional climate data series were analyzed for climate trends and extreme events. Our study improves understanding of the social and physical dimension of climate change. Especially in mountain areas, differing scales of climate data must be considered to capture local climate conditions and changes. Thus, local knowledge could make a major contribution to selecting representative climate datasets, estimating local impacts of climate change, and developing adaptation policies.
Highlights
Climate change, its impacts on socio– ecological systems and ways to address it, is a major concern in academic and political debates (IPCC 2014a; UN 2017; IPBES 2018)
Social dimensions of climate change are increasingly considered in climate change research (Mearns and Norton 2010), altering understanding of climate change: as a scientific issue that requires a better understanding of key biophysical processes and impacts, and as a human-security issue that requires understanding of differential capacities of people to respond to changing conditions (O’Brien et al 2007)
This study aims to combine local knowledge about climate change and adaptation with quantitative climate data by means of a place-based study in a remote tropical dry forest region in the Andes of South Ecuador
Summary
Two major interpretations can be identified: outcome vulnerability as a linear result of projected impacts of climate change on a particular exposure unit (biophysical or social), offset by adaptation measures, and context vulnerability based on a processual and multidimensional view of climate–society interactions (O’Brien et al 2007; Paul 2013). In the latter, vulnerability is seen as a current inability to cope with changing climatic conditions, where ‘‘climate variability and change are considered to occur in the context of political, institutional, economic, and social structures and changes, which interact dynamically with contextual conditions associated with a particular ‘exposure unit’’’ (O’Brien et al 2007: 76). Top-down scenariodriven approaches in climate change adaptation fail to consider local particularities, and growing dissatisfaction has resulted in a call for bottom-up
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