TY - JOUR
T1 - Adaptation in a multi-stressor environment
T2 - Perceptions and responses to climatic and economic risks by coffee growers in Mesoamerica
AU - Eakin, Hallie
AU - Tucker, Catherine M.
AU - Castellanos, Edwin
AU - Diaz-Porras, Rafael
AU - Barrera, Juan F.
AU - Morales, Helda
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the many coffee farmers who have participated in this research, and representatives of NGOs and government programs who offered their knowledge, time, and access to archival documents. We thank Sharon Amani and Ana Lucía Solano Garrido for their assistance with the data analysis. The Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) (CRN-2060) generously provided funding through U.S. NSF Grant GEO-0452325.
PY - 2014/2
Y1 - 2014/2
N2 - While climate change adaptation policy has tended to focus on planned adaptation interventions, in many vulnerable communities, adaptation will consist of autonomous, "unplanned" actions by individuals who are responding to multiple simultaneous sources of change. Their actions are likely not only to affect their own future vulnerability, but, through changes in livelihoods and resource use, the vulnerability of their community and resource base. In this paper, we document the autonomous changes to livelihood strategies adopted by smallholder coffee farmers in four Mesoamerican countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica). Our aim is to gain insight into the process of autonomous adaptation by proxy: through an assessment of how farmers explain their choices in relation to distinct stressors; and an understanding of the set of choices available to farmers. We find that climatic stress is a feature in decision making, but not the dominant driver. Nevertheless, the farmers in our sample are evidently flexible, adaptive, and experimental in relation to changing circumstances. Whether their autonomous responses to diverse stressors will result in a reduction in risk over time may well depend on the extent to which policy, agricultural research, and rural investments build on the inherent logic of these strategies.
AB - While climate change adaptation policy has tended to focus on planned adaptation interventions, in many vulnerable communities, adaptation will consist of autonomous, "unplanned" actions by individuals who are responding to multiple simultaneous sources of change. Their actions are likely not only to affect their own future vulnerability, but, through changes in livelihoods and resource use, the vulnerability of their community and resource base. In this paper, we document the autonomous changes to livelihood strategies adopted by smallholder coffee farmers in four Mesoamerican countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica). Our aim is to gain insight into the process of autonomous adaptation by proxy: through an assessment of how farmers explain their choices in relation to distinct stressors; and an understanding of the set of choices available to farmers. We find that climatic stress is a feature in decision making, but not the dominant driver. Nevertheless, the farmers in our sample are evidently flexible, adaptive, and experimental in relation to changing circumstances. Whether their autonomous responses to diverse stressors will result in a reduction in risk over time may well depend on the extent to which policy, agricultural research, and rural investments build on the inherent logic of these strategies.
KW - Autonomous adaptation
KW - Climate change
KW - Coffee production
KW - Livelihood strategies
KW - Market volatility
KW - Mesoamerica
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U2 - 10.1007/s10668-013-9466-9
DO - 10.1007/s10668-013-9466-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84891626405
SN - 1387-585X
VL - 16
SP - 123
EP - 139
JO - Environment, Development and Sustainability
JF - Environment, Development and Sustainability
IS - 1
ER -