Assessment of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation among Smallholder Farmers

Abstract

Human-induced climate change is considered a threat to communities and the natural system, in particular, agriculture, forestry, economy, health, and wellbeing. Climate change poses great influence on crop productivity, food supply and food security. Indonesian farmers are the most vulnerable group prone to climate change risks, where they rely on rain-fed agriculture system. Meanwhile, Farmer’s responses could play significant role in fighting with changing climate and rising agricultural production. Extreme weather events namely flood and long dry season, are great concerns for Indonesia and the region. Moreover, land cover around world’s many regions are being changed at a rapid pace. Particularly, deforestation is the main recognized type of land cover changes and the main contributor to climate change. Where, human activities particularly, agriculture expansion is the main driver of land transformation. The objectives of this study is to detect rainfall and temperature trends of the past thirty years, identify land cover changes and trends, and evaluate smallholder farmer’s perception and their responses against changing climate in Dramaga Sub-district. Where, the Dramaga has a huge number of populations relying on rain-fed agriculture, as to feed themselves and support food security. Three main sources for obtaining data have been used in this study: a): Monthly rainfall and temperature data were obtained from the Dramaga Climatology Station of Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency from the period 1990-2019. b): Satellite imageries Landsat 7 and landsat 8 operation land manager (OLI) with the 30 m resolution have been obtained from USGS online system. c): field data have been obtained from smallholder farmers using structured questionnaire and interview. In order to analyze the data, A Mann- Kendall statistical test has been run to detect the statistical significance of time series monthly rainfall and temperature data in comparison with the linear model. Likewise, to detect the land cover changes from 2000 to 2020, supervised classification has been carried out, and Land cover map for the 2000 and 2020 along with the changes detection have been prepared through Arc GIS 10.2. To find out climate change perception among smallholder farmers, descriptive statistics such as mean and standards deviation for the Likert scale statements analysis and a Chi-square test have been run to determine association among variables. The findings indicated no significant trends in the seasonal and annual rainfall in the past thirty years, whereas, annual mean and maximum temperature are rising significantly. Further, the annual minimum temperature does not show a statistically significant increase. Study Findings showed that, great areas in Bogor converted from vegetation – Agriculture (+27.2%), Vegetation – Built up (+12.1%), Vegetation – Bare land (+9.6%), forest – agriculture (+9.7%), and Forest – built up (+4.8%). Moreover, Approximately, 688 Ha land cover has been changed in Dramaga Sub-district in the past 20 years. In addition, majority of farmers are aware of climate change, where they felt that climate is changing. Most of farmers are practicing some common adaptation measure based on their experiences. Further, they have been practicing few mitigation measure as well. Climate events owing to the rainfall variation, Temperature rise, and land use change threat smallholder farmers. Results of the study might help decisionmakers and relevant stakeholders for climate-smart agricultural projects development at the community level. Moreover, they must understand the land cover changes, trend, and future challenges through conducting further prediction studies in order to contribute on preventing illegal development activities based on governmental regulation and sustainable land use management. In addition, Decision makers must contribute on reducing farmer’s vulnerabilities and enhancing their capacity due to lack of access to the latest environmentally sustainable agricultural technology.