Abstract
Primary producers, including graziers, crop farmers and commercial fishers are especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on highly climate-sensitive natural resources. Adaptation to climate change will make a major difference to the severity of the impacts experienced. However, individuals (resource users) can erect sometimes seemingly peculiar barriers to potential adaptation options that need to be addressed if adaptation is to be effective. Our aim was to understand the nature of barriers to change for cattle graziers in the northern Australian rangelands. We conceptualised barriers as adverse reactions where resource users are unlikely to contemplate adaptations that threaten core values or perceptions about themselves. We assumed that resource users that were more sensitive to climate change impacts—or more dependent on the resource—were more proximate to thresholds of coping and thus more likely to erect barriers, especially people with little adaptive capacity. Given that climate sensitivity and adaptive capacity are important components of vulnerability, our approach was to conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify potential but important barriers to change. Data from 240 graziers suggest that graziers in northern Australia might be especially vulnerable to climate change because their identity, place attachment, low employability, weak networks and dependents can make them sensitive to change, and their sensitivity can be compounded by a low adaptive capacity. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation, especially at the scale of the individual.
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Acknowledgments
The funding for this study was obtained from the Federal Department for Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries (DAFF) through the Meat and Livestock Association (MLA) project B.NBP.0617 and the Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO. We are sincerely grateful to the 240 graziers that agreed to participate in the study and to Amanda Elledge, Kate Nairn, Svetlana Ukulova, Charlie Morgan and Jamie Atwell for their dedicated efforts and brilliant skills as interviewers. Sincere thanks also to Ryan McAllister and Ian Watson for constructive comments on various drafts of the manuscript.
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Marshall, N., Stokes, C.J. Identifying thresholds and barriers to adaptation through measuring climate sensitivity and capacity to change in an Australian primary industry. Climatic Change 126, 399–411 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1233-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1233-x