Farmers’ perceptions, awareness, and knowledge of adaptation strategies to climate change: the case of Bahawalpur District in Southern Punjab, Pakistan

In the modern age, climate change (CC) has become one of the most burning global issues. All environment-dependent sectors are threatened by CC, particularly the agricultural and food sectors. Pakistan is one of the world’s highly vulnerable countries to extreme weather conditions and CC. Its agricultural sector is often badly affected by harsh weather. While some studies have highlighted farmers’ perceptions about CC adaptation and mitigation, there is still a lack of adequate cognizance among them. Basic knowledge is crucial for farmers to protect crops from extreme climatic conditions. To fill this gap, this study probes farmers’ awareness level of CC and allied factors. For this purpose, Bahawalpur was chosen as a sample district and 15 villages, three from each of its five tehsils, were studied. Using a stratified random sampling method and structured questionnaire, 50 farmers from each of the selected villages were interviewed. The gathered information was quantified and analysed applying various quantitative techniques. The results show that 78% of farmers were aware of CC, although their level of awareness and adaptive behaviour varied with farming experience, level of education, ownership status and size of the landholding, access to the market and agricultural extension services, and exposure to the latest information sources. The evaluation of adaptive behaviour revealed that most of the farmers were keenly applying irrigation (86.2%), crop type (61.2%), crop diversification (59%), and other adaptive strategies in the wake of present CC. Such studies may help in framing sustainable adaptation strategies in the milieu of recent CC.