The food industry is vulnerable to climate change. Producers will need to adapt to climate change if they, and the communities dependent on them, are to remain viable. There are essentially two ways to adapt - incrementally and transformationally. We differentiate between incremental and transformative adaptation mostly on the basis of the size of the change needed. Here, we studied the Australian peanut industry, which is already experiencing the effects of climate change. We expand on the notion of adaptive capacity and refer to 'transformational capacity' and test its association with resource dependency. Resource dependency is a measure of the interactions that primary producers have with a natural resource and includes factors such as occupational identity, networks, resource use as well as a range of financial factors. We hypothesized that some primary producers were more likely to demonstrate higher levels of transformational capacity if they possessed lower levels of resource dependency. We surveyed, by phone, 69 farmers representing 87 % of the peanut industry in northern Australia. Our results show that the capacity to transform depends upon individual's networks, their employability, tendency for strategic thinking and planning, business profitability, local knowledge, environmental awareness, use of irrigation and use of climate technology. Barriers to transformational change were occupational identity, place attachment and dependents. Our study is one of the first to focus on transformational capacity. This approach allows us to understand why some individuals are better able to adapt to change than others and also to assist industry and community leaders to develop broad-scale strategies. © 2013 INRA and Springer-Verlag France
Climate change presents many challenges for local government in Victoria, Australia. In the Macedon Ranges local government area the future climate is likely to include more hot days, less rainfall and run-off and increased frequency and intensity of extreme events such as drought, fl ash fl ooding and wildfi re. The purpose of this project was to identify, analyse and evaluate climate change risks and develop an adaptation plan that would assist the Macedon Ranges Shire Council on the outskirts of Melbourne begin to plan for likely impacts arising from climate change.The development of the adaptation plan employed a best practice risk management approach in line with AS/NZS 31000:2009 and AS 5334:2013 and took and whole-of-council approach. Undertaking a risk assessment approach to climate change adaptation planning for a peri-urban local government area was successful. The approach assisted council to build capacity in climate change, adaptation and the process of undertaking a risk assessment and defi ne their area of operation, infl uence and responsibility in regards to adaptation actions and the role of other external stakeholders. Further, it helped them to integrate the risks and associated adaptation options directly into the existing risk register system and understand the relativity of climate risks to non-climate risks that the council faces, such as land use change, increasing proportions of absentee landholders and an ageing demographic.
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