Perceived influence of climate variability in the context of multiple stressors on smallholder farmers in southern Mexico

ABSTRACT

Most studies on hazards to smallholder farmers focus on the impact of climate variability on their livelihoods. However, climate variability does not exist in isolation; rather, it manifests in combination with a multiplicity of stressors. This paper examines the perceptions of the influence of climate variability on multiple stressors affecting the agricultural livelihoods of smallholder farmers in an irrigation system in southern Mexico. An ethnographic approach was used to conduct a qualitative study of 85 smallholder farmers in four communities. The results showed that farmers are affected by several biophysical (e.g. water scarcity, crop disease) and socioeconomic (e.g. market price problems, high cost of chemical inputs) stressors that interact with climate variability. Farmers perceived increase in temperature, decrease in rainfall, and changes in the rainfall pattern (onset of the rainy season, its duration or cessation) as amplifying the stressors of water scarcity and crop disease. The results suggest that policies should go beyond the impacts of climate variability on agricultural livelihoods and consider the full range of socioeconomic impacts. Furthermore, the differences in perception regarding stressors and climate variability in communities point to the need for effective implementation of policies adapted to local conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural livelihoods
• rural communities
• social perception
• water scarcity
• irrigation
• chiapas

Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate the support of all the farmers and stakeholders in our study. We also would like to thank Gabriela Cuevas García for producing Figure 1 (maps of the study area) and Paola Pérez for transcribing the interviews. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ‘Programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación e innovación tecnológica’ [grant number IN303620].

Notes on contributors

David Leroy

David Leroy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental (CIGA-UNAM), Mexico. His work focuses on the vulnerability and adaptation of rural communities to environmental hazards, social perception of the environment and community management of natural resources. He holds a PhD in Environment and Societies by the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France.

Sara Barrasa García

Sara Barrasa is an assistant professor at the Department of Regional Geographic Analysis of the Complutense University of Madrid. She has over 15 years of experience working within the nexus between society and nature. In her research, she seeks to analysed the perception of local people about environmental problems and landscape change. Her current research includes vulnerability and climate change adaptation, tradicional environmental knowledge and conflict between conservation and development public policy.

Gerardo Bocco

Gerardo Bocco holds a PhD (Geography) by the University of Ámsterdam. He is a senior researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental (CIGA-UNAM), Mexico, and a visiting scientist at the CENPAT-CONICET, Argentina. He is especially interested in natural resource and environmental risk management at small peasant settlements in Latín America.