Climate Risk Management最新文献

Climate risk is a major threat to the sustainable food production of many farmers who depend on rainfed agricultural systems. In response to this threat, climate-smart agricultural innovations, such as drought-tolerant and early mature crop varieties, have been developed and promoted. It is well-known that adopting innovations and improved technologies positively impact adopters' well-being. Therefore, this study sought to determine the factors influencing the adoption of climate risk adaptation strategies and subsequently estimate how food security is affected by the adoption using questionnaire survey data from 1,080 farming households across six agro-ecological zones. The data were analysed using different matching techniques and Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR). The model results reveal that access to extension, crop-related and weather information, access to credit and climate change awareness of farmers increase the adoption likelihood of the climate risk adaptation strategies. Adoption of climate risk adaptation strategies positively impacts the food security of farming households as it increases their dietary diversity score and reduces the food security coping strategy index. Enhancing the accessibility of the drought-tolerant and early mature varieties, promoting crop-related and weather information through extension services, and empowering farmers through credit accessibility would strengthen the adoption of climate risk adaptation strategies to increase food security.

Smallholder farmers’ livelihoods follow predictable and cyclical patterns related to annual cycles of weather, crop and animal production and market fluctuations. Understanding seasonality forms an essential part of unravelling farming systems behaviour and performance, especially in contexts with strong seasonality, such as southern Mali. Farmers make strategic, tactical and operational decisions related to different time horizons to support their agricultural activities. The diverse resource endowments of farming households influence their decisions, and adaptive capacity. This study aimed to understand farmers’ management decisions to cope with weather variability and related consequences. We used a case study approach to analyse temporal interactions between farming system components using data collected over three consecutive years (2017–2019). We focused on three research questions. First, how do farmers navigate the regular patterns of seasonal variations in rainfall, prices, food and fodder availability, and income? Second, how does seasonality influence complementarity between farm components, and trade-offs and synergies among farming objectives that result from the allocation of scarce resources? Finally, how do farming households of different resource endowments respond to unexpected changes and how does this affect the above-mentioned synergies and trade-offs? The data collection methods included (1) focus group discussions, (2) household surveys, and (3) detailed farm monitoring. Farmers undertook diverse production activities, which helped to mitigate negative consequences of crop failure. While providing opportunities for increased adaptive capacity, this diversity also creates interdependencies among farming system components, leading to reinforced positive outcomes in good years and negative outcomes in bad years. This double-edged sword challenges the simple assumption that diversification increases the stability of a farming system. All farm types faced seasonal resource constraints to adapt to unexpected changes. However, the magnitudes of changes in synergies and trade-offs among objectives were less pronounced for medium resource endowed farmers because of their more balanced people- and herd-to-land ratio compared to high resource endowed farmers. Our findings suggest that a better understanding of farm management decisions and the influence of seasonality is key to support farm productivity and to expand the adaptive capacity of smallholders. We suggest that policies aiming to support farm productivity should pay attention to the specific impediments faced by farms with different resource endowments to adapt to changes. Especially, access to credit helps poorer farmers not only to navigate the seasonal food and cash constraints but also to escape poverty traps.

Climate-induced extreme events are increasingly affecting farmers’ livelihoods through weather-related losses such as flash floods, hailstorms, and rising temperatures. In response to these challenges, the Central Government has introduced the voluntary Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) as an effective risk management strategy. Under this scheme, farmers are required to pay a premium of 5 percent of the total compensation to avail the benefits. Apple, a major commercial crop in the north-western Himalayas, contributes 70 percent of India’s total apple production, with a significant share attributed to the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory. This study aims to explore whether apple growers are willing to pay for RWBCIS and to identify the drivers influencing their decision to purchase such insurance products. Data were collected from 900 apple growers in the purposively selected districts of Baramulla and Budgam in Jammu and Kashmir. The findings indicate that while all farmers were willing to adopt the weather-based crop insurance scheme, the majority were unwilling to pay the current premium. The estimated mean willingness to pay (WTP) was Rs. 37.22 per tree without covariates and Rs. 17 with covariates, compared to the prevailing Rs. 53 in the neighboring state of Himachal Pradesh. Factors contributing to the low WTP included a lack of knowledge about the scheme’s modalities, basis risk, and distrust in both government and private insurance companies. The government should consider innovative methods to provide existing subsidies to achieve the targeted coverage of 25 percent of farmers under the scheme.

Expansive learning theory was deployed in this study to explore how climate scientists can learn from working in a transdisciplinary mode, particularly to co-produce knowledge and navigate complex climate risks with other actors. A qualitative case study methodology was used to investigate expansive learning for climate scientists involved in the Future Resilience of African CiTies and Lands (FRACTAL) project. Findings from the study show how several major tensions of the cultural and historical work environment of scientists limit their potential to effectively produce scientific climate change information to inform decision making in complex African cities. Novel learning aspects were introduced during transdisciplinarity, which helped the scientists grapple with these tensions. They spent much time in cities with different groups of actors learning about the complex and dynamic drivers of risks in African cities and how these might change into the future. They also learned about the diverse subjectivities, priorities and values that influence African urban decision making. The group of scientists took learning actions to change their approach for co-producing knowledge with other actors in contexts of such complexity. These learning actions demonstrate transformative agency of climate scientists to expand their activities to collaboratively navigate complex African urban climate change risks.

Drawing on the securitisation and riskification of climate change literature, this paper investigates local governments’ climate risk management following a comparative analysis of three cases in the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The comparative analysis reveals how unwanted consequences of climate change are translated into climate risks, identifying the actors involved in these translations. The analysis then determines the means through which the translations occur, following a risk logic that underpins a particular governmental response to climate change. The findings of this analysis have been contrasted in terms of effects and side effects of the risk logic, showing that the three local cases follow a similar pattern. This paper contributes to understanding the challenges of climate risk management in terms of fortifying existing risk practices, expert-led responses with limited citizen involvement, and long-term societal engineering.

Land conservation has been recognized as a multifunctional adaptive strategy to tackle climate change as it includes the ability to mitigate risk and enhance biodiversity. However, limited empirical studies focus on the climatic adaptive functions of land conservation. Employing various geospatial and statistical techniques, including remote sensing, logistic regression, and landscape metrics, we investigate the effects of land conservation’s spatial characteristics. These characteristics affect the functional efficacy of climate adaptation in urban coastal regions, influencing regional economic vitality in the United States and China. Empirical results indicate that regional economic vitality is positively affected by parks and grassland, patch growth patterns, higher urban density, and closer proximities to coastlines and major roads. In contrast, the core growth form of land conservation has a negative economic effect. Among the estimated variables, we find that the patch growth form of land conservation and closer proximity to higher urban density have the largest positive effects on economic vitality across the study sites. Our findings contribute to both land conservation policy and the climate change literature by uncovering the spatially explicit effects of land conservation related to climate change adaptation.