Researching farmer behaviour in climate change adaptation and sustainable agriculture: lessons learned from five case studies

Understanding farmer behaviour is needed for local agricultural systems to produce food sustainably while facing multiple pressures. We synthesize existing literature to identify three fundamental questions that correspond to three distinct areas of knowledge necessary to understand farmer behaviour: 1) decision-making model; 2) cross-scale and cross-level pressures; and 3) temporal dynamics. We use this framework to compare five interdisciplinary case studies of agricultural systems in distinct geographical contexts across the globe. We find that these three areas of knowledge are important to understanding farmer behaviour, and can be used to guide the interdisciplinary design and interpretation of studies in the future. Most importantly, we find that these three areas need to be addressed simultaneously in order to understand farmer behaviour. We also identify three methodological challenges hindering this understanding: the suitability of theoretical frameworks, the trade-offs among methods and the limited timeframe of typical research projects. We propose that a triangulation research strategy that makes use of mixed methods, or collaborations between researchers across mixed disciplines, can be used to successfully address all three areas simultaneously and show how this has been achieved in the case studies. The framework facilitates interdisciplinary research on farmer behaviour by opening up spaces of structured dialogue on assumptions, research questions and methods employed in investigation.

Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in coastal cities: lessons from a pilot experience in Maputo, Mozambique

This paper proposes a rights-based approach for participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in urban areas. Participatory urban planning ties climate change adaptation to local development opportunities. Previous discussions suggest that participatory urban planning may help to understand structural inequalities, to gain, even if temporally, institutional support and to deliver a planning process in constant negotiation with local actors. Building upon an action research project which implemented a process of participatory urban planning for climate change in Maputo, Mozambique, this paper reflects upon the practical lessons that emerged from these experiences, in relation to the incorporation of climate change information, the difficulties to secure continued support from local governments and the opportunities for local impacts through the implementation of the proposals emerging from this process.

Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation: Mid-Atlantic Region Case Study

Transportation has contributed to climate change and will most likely be impacted by changes in sea level, temperature, precipitation, and wind, for example. As the risk of climate change impacts become more imminent, pressure for adaptation within transportation agencies to address these impacts continues to rise. The most logical strategy is to integrate consideration of adaptation projects into the long-range transportation planning (LRTP) process. To do this, tools and experience are needed to assist transportation agencies. The Climate Change Adaptation Tool for Transportation (CCATT) is a step-by-step method to evaluate climate change scenarios and impacts, inventory at-risk existing and proposed infrastructure, and assess mitigation practices to identify supporting adaptation efforts. This paper focuses on the application of CCATT to the Mid-Atlantic region using a case study on the Wilmington Area Planning Council (WILMAPCO), the Metropolitan Planning Organization for northern Delaware. The results of the application and case study demonstrate the importance of climate change adaptation practices in long-range transportation planning. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000515. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.

How are climate change adaptation strategies put into practice? A case study comparison of natural hazard prevention

Climate change affects increasingly the management of natural resources and has diverse impacts of environmental, social and economic nature. To take this complexity into account, climate change adaptation policies consider the principle of sustainable development. Sustainability is an integrative concept which should insure a long-term and multi-sectoral response to climate change. But the question appears if sustainable development is only retained at the conceptual level or effectively implemented in practice. This paper pursues this question by comparing three projects addressing natural hazard in Swiss mountains. The aim is to investigate how sustainable development is perceived by involved stakeholders and implemented in practice. Two dimensions are thus taken into account: the type of actors participating in these projects and their preferences and interests. The first dimension thus analyzes if diverse actors representing the environmental, economic and social arenas are integrated; the second dimension investigates if different interests and preferences in the sense of sustainability were incorporated in the design and implementation of climate change adaptation. Data were gathered through a standardized survey among all actors involved in the three projects. Preliminary results show that sustainability receives diverse weight and interest in the different cases.

The late Miocene to Holocene erosion pattern of the Alpine foreland basin reflects Eurasian slab unloading beneath the western Alps rather than global climate change

We synthesized published data on the erosion of the Alpine foreland basin and apatite fission-track ages from the Alps to infer the erosional sediment budget history for the past 5 m.y. The data reveal that erosion of the Alpine foreland basin is highest in front of the western Alps (between 2 and 0.6 km) and decreases eastward over a distance of 700 km to the Austrian foreland basin (similar to 200 m). For the western Alps, erosion rates are >0.6 km/m.y., while erosion rates for the eastern foreland basin and the adjacent eastern Alps are <0.1 km/m.y., except for a small-scale signal in the Tauern Window. The results yield a large ellipsoidal, orogen-crossing pattern of erosion, centered along the western Alps. We suggest that accelerated erosion of the western Alps and their foreland basin occurred in response to regional-scale surface uplift, related to lithospheric unloading of the Eurasian slab along the Eurasian-Adriatic plate boundary. While we cannot rule out recent views that global climate change led to substantial erosion of the European Alps since 5 Ma, we postulate that regional-scale tectonic processes have driven erosion during this time, modulated by an increased erosional flux in response to Quaternary glaciations.

Sustainability principles put into practice: case studies of network analysis in Swiss climate change adaptation

Climate adaptation policies increasingly incorporate sustainability principles into their design and implementation. Since successful adaptation by means of adaptive capacity is recognized as being dependent upon progress toward sustainable development, policy design is increasingly characterized by the inclusion of state and non-state actors (horizontal actor integration), cross-sectoral collaboration, and inter-generational planning perspectives. Comparing four case studies in Swiss mountain regions, three located in the Upper Rhone region and one case from western Switzerland, we investigate how sustainability is put into practice. We argue that collaboration networks and sustainability perceptions matter when assessing the implementation of sustainability in local climate change adaptation. In other words, we suggest that adaptation is successful where sustainability perceptions translate into cross-sectoral integration and collaboration on the ground. Data about perceptions and network relations are assessed through surveys and treated via cluster and social network analysis.