Adapting to climate variability: the views of peasant farmers in Nepal

There are growing concerns, especially from farmers in rural mid-east Nepal, about main-streaming locally-led climate adaptation strategies. Using a bottom-up approach, we analysed the bio-physical and socio-economic impacts on Nepalese agriculture from three focus group discussions and a survey of 60 peasant farmers to identify the relevant climate change impacts which were used to investigate how farmers' practices overcome any climate-based barriers. The results suggest that farmers are partially able to minimise the impacts of climate-based barriers whereas they have difficulty in coping with non-climatic barriers. The results emphasise the role of government and other stakeholders in locally-led adaptation (not only in mitigation) as an avenue to combat the negative impacts of climate-based variability.
Keywords: climate variability, farmer perceptions, locally-led adaptation, climate change adaptation, peasant farmers, Nepal, rural areas, agriculture, climate change impacts