Abstract
Our scientific view on climate change adaptation (CCA) is unsatisfying in many ways: It is often dominated by a modernistic perspective of planned pro-active adaptation, with a selective focus on measures directly responding to climate change impacts and thus it is far from real-life conditions of those who are actually affected by climate change. Farmers have to simultaneously adapt to multiple changes. Therefore, also empirical climate change adaptation research needs a more integrative perspective on real-life climate change adaptations. This also has to consider “hidden” adaptations, which are not explicitly and directly motivated by CCA but actually contribute to the sector’s adaptability to climate change. The aim of the present study is to develop and test an analytic framework that contributes to a broader understanding of CCA and to bridge the gap between scientific expertise and practical action. The framework distinguishes three types of CCA according to their climate related motivations: explicit adaptations, multi-purpose adaptations, and hidden adaptations. Although agriculture is among the sectors that are most affected by climate change, results from the case study of Tyrolean mountain agriculture show that climate change is ranked behind other more pressing “real-life-challenges” such as changing agricultural policies or market conditions. We identified numerous hidden adaptations which make a valuable contribution when dealing with climate change impacts. We conclude that these hidden adaptations have not only to be considered to get an integrative und more realistic view on CCA; they also provide a great opportunity for linking adaptation strategies to farmers’ realities.
Highlights
Because of the observability of impacts of climate change (CC) in ecosystems, societies and economies (IPCC 2014), attention to adaptation has increased significantly for the past few years
To provide a poly-rational framework for CCA that includes the resilience perspective, we propose a threefold concept of climate change adaptation, ranging from “explicit” to “hidden” interventions
The analysis focused on CCA actions characterized by at least one the following criteria derived from CCA literature: (1) response to climatic stimuli (Smit et al 2000), (2) increase in resilience (Adger et al 2005), (3) awareness raising (BMLFUW 2012), (4) research in the field of CCA and (5) organic farming initiatives (Borron 2006, Niggli et al 2007)
Summary
Because of the observability of impacts of climate change (CC) in ecosystems, societies and economies (IPCC 2014), attention to adaptation has increased significantly for the past few years. The concept of CCA has got so much attention from scholars all over the world, the limits and barriers in practice are still manifold (e.g. Adger et al 2007; Dow et al 2013; Ford and King 2015). Whereas planned adaptations are “based on an awareness” (Malik et al 2010) and “require conscious intervention” (Fankhauser et al 1999) Both types are recognized by several scholars Adaptation in practice does not always follow the concept of planned adaptation, it is often reactive (Adger et al 2005) and non-climatic stressors play a role for adaptability (McDowell et al 2014)
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