Considerations of climate and society in Asia (II): Our work with farmers in Indonesia

In this companion paper to “What Climate Change Means for Farmers in Asia,” we report on our work in Indonesia to try to build a rural response to climate change. Our approach started with meetings to answer farmers’ questions on climate change and its consequences. For the present, farmers in places like Indramayu, coastal West Java, must find more answers to the increasing rainfall variability, including increasingly severe extreme events presently are experienced and predicted to continue. We therefore proceeded with advocating and guiding daily simple rainfall measurements by farmers in their plots together with increased daily observations and analyses of their agro-ecosystems. This data is also recorded for comparisons in later years. We are also advocating for this approach to be used elsewhere in Asia.