Farmers' perceived risks of climate change and influencing factors: a study in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

Environ Manage

School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Urrbrae, SA, 5064, Australia,

Published: August 2014

Many countries are confronting climate change that threatens agricultural production and farmers' lives. Farmers' perceived risks of climate change and factors influencing those perceived risks are critical to their adaptive behavior and well-planned adaptation strategies. However, there is limited understanding of these issues. In this paper, we attempt to quantitatively measure farmers' perceived risks of climate change and explore the influences of risk experience, information, belief in climate change, and trust in public adaptation to those perceived risks. Data are from structured interviews with 598 farmers in the Mekong Delta. The study shows that perceived risks to production, physical health, and income dimensions receive greater priority while farmers pay less attention to risks to happiness and social relationships. Experiences of the events that can be attributed to climate change increase farmers' perceived risks. Information variables can increase or decrease perceived risks, depending on the sources of information. Farmers who believe that climate change is actually happening and influencing their family's lives, perceive higher risks in most dimensions. Farmers who think that climate change is not their concern but the government's, perceive lower risks to physical health, finance, and production. As to trust in public adaptation, farmers who believe that public adaptive measures are well co-ordinated, perceive lower risks to production and psychology. Interestingly, those who believe that the disaster warning system is working well, perceive higher risks to finance, production, and social relationships. Further attention is suggested for the quality, timing, and channels of information about climate change and adaptation.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-014-0299-6DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

climate change
36
perceived risks
32
farmers' perceived
16
risks
13
risks climate
12
climate
9
change
9
mekong delta
8
trust public
8
public adaptation
8

Similar Publications

Coupling tree-ring and geomorphic analyses to reconstruct the 1950s massive Glacier Lake Outburst Flood at Grosse Glacier, Chilean Patagonia.

Sci Total Environ

January 2025

Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; dendrolab.ch, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Department F.-A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Over recent decades, global warming has led to sustained glacier mass reduction and the formation of glacier lakes dammed by potentially unstable moraines. When such dams break, devastating Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) can occur in high mountain environments with catastrophic effects on populations and infrastructure. To understand the occurrence of GLOFs in space and time, build frequency-magnitude relationships for disaster risk reduction or identify regional links between GLOF frequency and climate warming, comprehensive databases are critically needed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although agricultural health has gained importance, to date, much of the existing research relies on traditional epidemiological approaches that often face limitations related to sample size, geographic scope, temporal coverage, and the range of health events examined. To address these challenges, a complementary approach involves leveraging and reusing data beyond its original purpose. Administrative health databases (AHDs) are increasingly reused in population-based research and digital public health, especially for populations such as farmers, who face distinct environmental risks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The impacts of degradation and deforestation on tropical forests are poorly understood, particularly at landscape scales. We present an extensive ecosystem analysis of the impacts of logging and conversion of tropical forest to oil palm from a large-scale study in Borneo, synthesizing responses from 82 variables categorized into four ecological levels spanning a broad suite of ecosystem properties: (i) structure and environment, (ii) species traits, (iii) biodiversity, and (iv) ecosystem functions. Responses were highly heterogeneous and often complex and nonlinear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations.

Science

January 2025

College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia, Australia.

Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Grazing can reduce wildfire risk amid climate change.

Science

January 2025

Valério D. Pillar is at the Laboratório de Ecologia Quantitativa, Departamento de Ecologia/Centro de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Over half of Earth's land surface is covered with fire-prone vegetation, with grassy ecosystems-such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, and shrublands-being the most extensive. In the context of the climate crisis, scientists worldwide are exploring adaptation measures to address the heightened fire risk driven by more frequent extreme climatic conditions such as droughts and heatwaves, as well as by non-native plant invasions that increased fuel loads and altered fire regimes. Although fire is intrinsic to grassy ecosystems, rising exposure to wildfire smoke harms human health and the environment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!