Adaptation
What does adaptation to climate change mean for small-scale farmers?
Coffee or tea producers living in poor rural areas are highly vulnerable to climate change, but they are not only
loosing the quality of their crops or their yields due to climatic impacts. In fact, they are affected by heavy
rains, strong winds, increasing temperatures, or less rainfall because their plantations are often in poor conditions.
They have neither access to technical or financial supporting mechanisms nor the capacity to strategically confront
future challenges. So the first important step on the long way to adapting to future climate conditions is to help
them understand the reasons why they are affected and to recognise their own past and present mistakes.
The four exemplary adaptation strategies that were developed within AdapCC rely on few, but important principles:
AdapCC Adaptation Principles
- Strengthening the resilience of a farmers' plantation by applying sustainable agriculture practices is the
first step to mitigate the risk of being affected.
- Diversifying farmers' income and food production reduces their dependence on monocultures and spreads the
risk of yield and income loss.
- Diversification with cash crops suitable for future production beyond climate change turns climate change
losers into the winners of climate change.
- Increasing the efficient use of natural resources like forests, biodiversity, water, and soil increases
farmers' productivity in the long run and in a sustainable way.
- Selecting more resistant crop varieties could be an option to adapt coffee and tea production.
- Adopting the technologies for processing helps farmers to conserve the quality of the products and
earnings.
- Building farmers' capacity through providing access to information and knowledge empowers them to take
action and make decisions.
- Building partnerships between different public and private actors helps farmers to benefit from improved
framework conditions to cope with climate change.
- Receiving income from climate friendly certified products or credits for reduced greenhouse gas emissions
could be an option to finance adaptation measures.
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