Assessment of Farm Households’ Perception of and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change Risks in Tunisian Semi-Arid Areas

This study mainly seeks to answer three research questions. First, we’ll look at how farmers perceive climate change (CC). Second, we’ll examine how farmers adapt their practices in response to perceived in climatic changes and finally we examine the factors that influence the farmers’ willingness to use adaptive strategies to tackle climate change threat in the Tunisian semi-arid region. Secondary and primary data collected from the governorate of Zaghouan and parametric, non-parametric methods and econometric models were used for the analysis. The findings showed that farm households were mostly worried about the environmental, social, and risk of food insecurity effects caused by the phenomenon of climate change, such as soil degradation, water scarcity, a decline in crop yields, the outbreak of pests and diseases, a decline in social life and stress from extreme events. Results also showed that education level, extension service, market access and climate change awareness were the most significant factors affecting the farmers’ perception and beliefs about climate threat. Furthermore the most common on-farm autonomous adaptation strategies used by farmers in the study region are the changing varieties and crops diversification, the increased use of water, farming calendar adjustment and income diversification. The results of the Logistic regression model showed that farmers’ intention to adapt was affected mostly by farming experience, family size, education, belonging to cooperative, market access, irrigated area and main activity. The findings of the study point to the need for increased funding for farmer training and an improved institutional framework for CC adaptation in order to improve farmers’ well-being.