ABSTRACT
Mountain farming provides a range of vital functions to people but is severely affected by climate change impacts. To safeguard these functions, successful adaptations are key, but few studies have been dedicated to understanding mountain farmers’ adaptation strategies in Europe. This study was conducted in Eastern Tyrol, Austria, to understand local people’s perceptions of (i) climatic changes, (ii) their impacts on mountain farming, and (iii) adaptations to climate change impacts. Twenty-seven nature-dependent local inhabitants, mostly farmers, were interviewed with semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The results indicate that respondents report several climatic changes that impact mountain farming. Most of the observations are reported to reduce agricultural productivity. Respondents argue that climate change impacts pose new socio-economic and ecological challenges while exacerbating ongoing ones, especially land abandonment. Eastern Tyrolean farmers adopt technical and management-related climate change adaptations at farm level, whereas transformative adaptations at the community level are hardly implemented mainly due to declines in available labour force. Overcoming the barriers to transformative adaptations to climate change impacts must therefore address such socio-economic challenges.
