Agriculture is responsible for the bulk of Ireland’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the potential to mitigate some of these emissions through the adoption of more efficient farm management practices may be hampered by farmers’ awareness and attitude towards climate change and agriculture’s role in contributing to GHG emissions. This paper presents results from a survey of 746 Irish farmers in 2014, with a view to understanding farmers’ awareness of, and attitudes to, climate change and GHG emissions. Survey results show that there was a general uncertainty towards a number of questions related to agricultural GHG emissions, e.g. if tilling of land causes GHG emissions, and that farmers were reluctant to take action to reduce GHG emissions on their farm. To further explore farmers’ attitudes towards climate change, a multinomial logit model was used to examine the socio-economic factors that affect farmers’ willingness to adopt an advisory tool that would show the potential reduction in GHG emissions from the adoption of new technologies. Results show that farmers’ awareness of human-induced global climate change was positively related to the tool’s adoption.
Key policy insights
Irish farmers are generally not sufficiently aware of the impact of their activities on climate change.
A quarter of farmers believed that climate change will only impact on their business in the long-term; such an attitude may lead to a reluctance amongst these farmers to adopt management practices that reduce GHG emissions.
Awareness of climate change affects positively the adoption of new tools to reduce GHG emissions on farmers’ farms.
IT literacy affects willingness to adopt new tools to address GHG emissions.
Reception of agri-environmental advice can have a positive influence on farmers’ willingness to adopt new GHG emission abatement tools.
Farmers in receipt of environmental subsidies are more likely to adopt new abatement tools, either because they are more environmentally conscious or because the subsidy raised their environmentally consciousness.
Willingness to adopt differs between different farm enterprises; operating dairy enterprise increases the willingness to adopt new advisory mitigation tools.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) hold great promise as an effective conservation tool, but the potential negative socioeconomic impacts of MPAs remain poorly understood. Indeed, little work has been done to advance the frameworks and methods needed to assess, measure, and communicate the potential negative socioeconomic impact of MPAs and incorporate this information in MPA planning and management efforts. To address this gap, we test a vulnerability assessment termed the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) that is designed to measure the relative potential impact a proposed MPA network may have upon fisherman livelihoods. To test the LVI, specifically we ask, how does the vulnerability of fishermen to the impact of MPAs differ across place? We explore this question through two core areas of inquiry surrounding the study of vulnerability assessments: 1) Ranking and comparing vulnerability and 2) Explaining attributes of vulnerability. Through this study we demonstrate how the historical and current conditions fishermen experience in a given place shape vulnerability levels in various ways. Variability in the attributes of a particular place such as weather conditions, the size of fishing areas, availability of alternative fisheries, and changes in kelp cover contribute inherently as measures of vulnerability but they also shape fishermen perceptions of what are important measures of vulnerability. Secondly, counter to existing notions, the use of weights in vulnerability assessments may not significantly impact vulnerability scores and ranking. Together these findings emphasize the need to test vulnerability assessments against actual experienced impact or harm across geographies and groups of fishermen towards an informed refinement of vulnerability assessments. We emphasize that the particularities of place are critical to understand, to appropriately assess and thus to effectively mitigate vulnerability in order to promote the future well being of fisherman livelihoods. 相似文献