The Role of Social Networks for Farming Communities to Adapt to Climate Variability and Extremes: A Mixed Methods Study of Farmers in New Zealand

Abstract

Climate change poses a severe threat to the livelihoods of farming communities around the globe. These resource-dependent communities adapt to the risks and impacts of weather extremes and catastrophic events, both individually and collectively. Scholars and adaptation practitioners generally concur that social networks play a crucial role in enhancing climate resilience and are important components of adaptive capacity. Yet, there is limited research that explores the role that social networks play in natural resource dependent communities in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. In response to this observation, this research explores the roles that formal and informal social networks play in the lives of farmers and their responses to climate variability and environmental changes, most notably, how social networks contribute to the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate variability and extremes. Furthermore, this study also seeks to understand the different aspects of farmers’ awareness of and concerns about environmental changes, and how they use different management strategies to cope with and adapt to climate variability and extremes. This research utilises a mixed-methods approach and draws upon data obtained from semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of farming communities and a web-based questionnaire distributed among farmers. The analysis reveals that although many farmers did not make a direct connection between the climate change and drought conditions that they were experiencing (or had experienced in the past), their unique awareness of the future impacts of climate change at a localised level enable pertinent measures of preparation and adjustment. This research also highlights farmers participating in various group activities and social networks enhancing farm diversification strategies and were found to be more resilient in their capacity because they had access to shared adaptation-related information, materials, new knowledge, and innovation that, in turn, facilitated the skills and resources needed to cope with, and adapt to, climate variability and extremes. More importantly, this study shows how group activities and social networks can also create adverse effects by enforcing homophily as well as exclusion and marginalisation among certain groups in these networks. In addition, this study shows the nuances of social processes at a community level through bonding and bridging ties from formal and informal networks, which have an important role to play in the resilience of communities in resource-dependent communities facing climate variability and extremes.