Understanding rural landholder responses to climate change

Furthermore, while some external exposures and adaptive capacity determinants willbe common to individual landholdings, the property location and characteristics ofindividual landholders can vary greatly. Consequently, vulnerability to climate changecan vary considerably across a region. This variation means that an agriculturalsystem‟s vulnerability will be determined by aggregate condition oflandholding/farms in that region.2.4: Clarification of termsLanguage is an important part of environmental discourse – it is part of theconstruction, interpretation, discussion and analysis of conversations (Dryzek 1997).Dialogue about the phenomenon of the warming of the Earth‟s climate, implicationsof that warming, and required responses to those changes has been variously andsometimes interchangeably referred to as „global warming‟, „climate change‟, or„climate variability‟.Climate variability has been defined as irregular patterns or extreme conditions, suchas more frequent droughts, or deviations from normal growing season conditions(Smit and Skinner 2002). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)defines climate change as any change in climate over time whether due to naturalvariability or resulting from human activity. This usage differs from that in the UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where climatechange refers to change that is attributed to human activity that alters the compositionof the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observedover comparable time periods (IPCC 2007). In this research we have followed theinterpretation of the UNFCCC in our use of the term „climate change‟. While climatevariability is a feature of the Australian experience, modelling suggests that „climatechange‟ will increase that variability (DSE 2008b).Other climatic phenomena like „drought‟ have also been challenging to define. Someargued earlier this decade that „drought‟ needed to be recognised as a complex but„normal‟ part of Australian agriculture – a consequence of a highly variable climateand should be referred to as part of „climate variability‟ (Botterill and Fisher 2003;Lindesay 2003). Recent national dialogues position „drought‟ as something that willbe affected by „climate change‟ – with a projected two-fold increase in theirfrequency and severity (Hennessy et al. 2008). The current National Drought Policy isbeing reviewed with a view to better preparing farmers, rural communities andAustralia‟s primary industries for the challenges of „climate change‟ (MAFF 2008).This review signals a policy shift from treating drought and climate change separatelyand a movement towards linking drought preparedness and climate change adaptation(Milne et al. 2008). In this research, the term „climate variability‟ refers to theexperience of landholders of past and current variations or trends in climate, including„drought‟.Lorenzoni et al. (2006) suggested that the shift from the term „global warming‟ to„climate change‟ was part of a strategy by sceptics to neutralise the seriousness of thephenomenon. Similarly, previous research in the NCCMA region (McDonald et al.2006) found climate change to be both poorly understood and a highly politicisedterm implying allegiance to a particular political party or way of thinking. Regardlessof how „climate change‟ is perceived by scientists, individual perceptions of itsmeaning are likely to relate more to the public discourse than the science. In framingthis research we acknowledged that „climate change‟ is not generally seen in terms of6