ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a decision-making perspective could be productively used as the driving force for defining an appropriate methodology. It details relevant decision makers and their interests in climate change. The chapter identifies two key deficiencies of approaches to assessing impacts of climate change. It deals with a brief summary and a list of high-priority directions for socioeconomic research efforts. Agricultural producers and agribusiness managers make long-term investments that are based, usually implicitly, on some expectation about the future characteristics of climate. Both the nature and degree of the adaptations may be extremely important in determining the ultimate effect of climate change. Specification of a particular set of procedures as preferred implies general agreement on the purpose driving the underlying analysis. It appears that the underlying purpose is evolving for agricultural-impact assessments of climate change. Agricultural producers and agribusiness managers make long-term investments that are based, usually implicitly, on some expectation about the future characteristics of climate.
