Transhumance Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change in the Mediterranean Region, Turkey

Abstract

The perception of climate change (i), observations on climate change (ii) and climate change adaptation strategies (iii) of 37 transhumance farmers were questioned. The study was carried out in Silifke, Aydıncık, Erdemli district of Mersin province in the Mediterranean Region, Turkey. The data analysis was done both using qualitative and quantitative methods. Likert-type scale was used to measure perception on climate changes and adaptation strategies. Majority of farmers have heard of climate change (71%). Almost all farmers observed both the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events such as drought (58%), heat and unreliable rainfall (86%), reflecting actual trends in rainfall and temperature in the study area and farmers focused mainly on selling livestock (100%) (mostly to cope with degraded natural grassland/feed deficiency) as an adaptive strategy. There is a massive gap on the adaptative strategies action plan in the regional administration. In light of the aforementioned findings and shortfalls, it is suggested that early warning policy systems be developed with the goal of making transhumance farmers aware of future climate variability and potential shocks so that they can take proactive steps to employ various approaches that best suit different agro-climatic conditions. © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)