The effect of policy leveraging climate change adaptive capacity in agriculture

Abstract

Today, agriculture suffers significantly from changes in weather and climate conditions because autonomous farm climate adaptation remains disappointingly low. This is partly explained by an insufficient degree of adaptive capacity. Nevertheless, this effect of adaptive capacity has not been quantified before because methodologies merely capture autonomous farm adaptation, ignoring regional policy influences. This paper shows for the first time that there is a significant, yet non-linear positive relationship between adaptive capacity and climate responsiveness. This implies that adaptive capacity is an indispensable policy tool to enhance adaptation but that generic adaptive capacity will not continue increasing climate responsiveness. As such, further investments in specific adaptive capacity are necessary and some regions must do more efforts before adaptive capacity will increase climate responsiveness.