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2. Grassland farmers’ attitudes toward climate change in the North German Plain
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Eggers, Markus (author), Kayser, Manfred (author), and Isselstein, Johannes (author)
- Format:
- Online journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2015
- Published:
- Springer
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 18 Document Number: D10508
- Journal Title:
- Regional Environmental Change
- Journal Title Details:
- 15: 607–617
- Notes:
- 11 pages., via online journal., Climate change impacts will affect grassland farming in various ways in the future. Communication and knowledge transfer are crucial to implement on-farm adaptation measures required to meet these challenges in a timely way. Therefore, we need to know how grassland farmers perceive climate change and which factors influence their attitude. We hypothesized that besides direct factors such as region, farm size, age and education, farmers’ socio-cultural background and their beliefs and attitudes are most important in their reaction to climate change. To investigate this, we conducted a survey with extensive on-farm interviews (n = 82) in four distinctive regions in the North German Plain on a gradient from sub-maritime to areas with sub-continental climate. We found that with a more continental climate and less rainfall and with increasing farm size, grassland farmers were more aware of the implications of climate change. In a second step, to categorize the influence of personal beliefs on decisions concerning farming, we applied the typology approach and distinguished four farming styles. Farmers in the four groups differed in terms of climate change awareness and adaptation preferences (P < 0.05). Yield Optimizers and Modernists were more open-minded to rational and economic facts and showed a significantly greater willingness to implement adaptation measures than Idealists and Traditionalists, who need to be addressed at a more emotional level. The results of this study may contribute to the development of better‐targeted adaptation policies that will serve specific groups of farmers more effectively.
3. Transforming communication and knowledge production processes to address high-end climate change
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Tàbara, J. David (author), St. Clair, Asun Lera (author), and Hermansen, Erlend A.T. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2017-04-01
- Published:
- Science Direct
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10272
- Journal Title:
- Environmental Science and Policy
- Journal Title Details:
- 70 : 31-37
- Notes:
- 7 pages., Via online journal., Recent GHG emissions trends are in stark contrast with the Paris Agreement’s target to hold the increase in average global warming to “well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to stay below 1,5 °C” by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times. This disconnect has further unveiled the limitations of current knowledge production and communication processes in Southern European countries, where fast institutional changes are needed to address the potential impacts as well as the opportunities for transformation derived from High-End Climate Change (HECC). The prevailing knowledge deficit-model – aimed at producing ‘more knowledge’ about climate impacts, vulnerabilities and long-term scenarios to decision makers – has long proven inadequate in tackling the many complexities of the present socio-climate quandary. The growing emphasis on assessing and implementing concrete solutions, demand new and more complex forms of agent interactions in the production, framing, communication and use of climate knowledge; and in particular, explicit procedures able to tackle difficult normative questions regarding assessment of solutions and the allocation of individual and collective responsibilities. To explore these challenges, we analyse the views of 30 Spanish knowledge contributors and users of the latest UN IPCC AR5 report and share the insights gained from the implementation of a participatory Integrated Assessment procedure aimed at developing innovative solutions to high-end climate scenarios in Iberia. Our analysis supports the view of the need to institutionalise transformation, and in particular underlines the potential role that transformative climate boundary organisations could play to address such difficult ethical choices in different contexts of action.