ABSTRACT
In the last decades, Albania has experienced an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events such as floods, heat waves, and drought. Rural communities are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts due to their dependence on agriculture for food security and income. The effects of climate change negatively impact the livelihood of small-scale farmers and livestock keepers living near the Bredhi i Hotovës-Dangëlli National Park in south Albania. Understanding how rural dwellers perceive the effects of climate change and which strategies they put in place to cope and adapt to those effects is particularly important for fostering the adoption of suitable policies. Through semi-structured interviews and the construction of timelines, we investigated the perceptions of Albanian rural dwellers on climate change and the coping and adaptation strategies they are adopting. Although small-scale farmers and livestock keepers attribute some negative impacts on their activities to climate change, our results suggest that climate change impacts are not generating disrupting changes in their livelihood strategies. Moreover, small-scale farmers mentioned that they face socio-economic challenges due to the shift from a communist system to a market economy, affecting their adaptation capacity. Lack of technology, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to the market, land fragmentation, and lack of financial support have been identified as significant barriers to adopting appropriate adaptive responses to climate change. The low responsiveness of rural dwellers to climate change can also be linked to the fact that their capacity to innovate and implement effective adaptation strategies has been weakened by several decades of top-down regulation of farming practices during the communist period.
