FARMERS' PERCEPTIONS AND STRATEGIES TOWARDS A CHANGING CLIMATE IN PERI-URBAN AQUACULTURE: A CASE STUDYOF THANH TRI DISTRICT, HANOI, VIETNAM

Abstract

Climate change and variability poses serious risks and impacts on natural-based production activities including aquaculture. Little studies have been devoted to discovering how farmers perceive climate variability and its impacts and the relationship between the perceptions and adaptive responses. This research focuses on the perceptions and strategies of peri-urban fish farmers at different farming scales in the Thanh Tri District, Hanoi in a context of changing climate and urbanization. The study found out that peri-urban fish farmers have an increasing concern about local climate variability, especially in temperature, rainfall variability and frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events. However, most of interviewed farmers relied on recent climate variability in short-term instead of long-term changes in climate. Furthermore, the results show that farmers at different farming scales perceived different degree of climate variability impacts. Small-scale farms are perceived to affect most from the changes in climate variability and become the most vulnerable to those changes comparing to others scales. Besides, impacts from climate variability affect both negatively and positively to farmers and are exacerbated by non-climate factors including urbanization. Farmers mainly use autonomous adaptive strategies based on personal experience in order to response to changes in climate and its impacts. Water stress and land tenure are identified as two key barriers for farmers to decline adaptive capacity in a changing climate.