Abstract
As ongoing research efforts contribute to elucidating the consequences of climate change as well as adaptation and mitigation options, aligning the current research knowledge with stakeholder opinions and perceptions remains critical for adopting effective climate change policies. This paper utilizes an interactive survey to (1) address the aforementioned gap in studies involving three groups of stakeholders and opinion makers and (2) perform a comparative primary study of the climate change assumptions, risk perceptions, policy preferences, observations, and knowledge of Czech farmers, governmental policy-makers and researchers. This study shows that the stakeholder groups agree that the climate is clearly changing, attribute this change mostly to man-made causes and expect the negative effects to either prevail or be unevenly geographically distributed. The large majority of all three groups consider unmitigated climate change a major threat even by 2050 and agree that preparing in advance is the best sectoral strategy. Importantly, while investment in adaptation measures is considered the most efficient tool for accelerating the implementation of adaptation measures, the CAP and EU rules (as valid in 2016) are believed to hinder such measures. The results of this study have ramifications for the wider region of Central Europe.
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Data Availability
Anonymized responses to the questions and the presentations provided at the conference are available upon request by the authors and (notably, the entire survey and most presentations were conducted in the Czech language).
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Acknowledgements
As authors, we would like to pay tribute to the life-long work of our friend and research associate prof. Arne Skjelvåg sadly passed away in June 2021. Dr. Daniela Semerádová is acknowledged for her help in drafting Fig. 1. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and challenging remarks, which greatly improved the original version of the study.
Funding
The study was supported by the project SustES - Adaptation strategies for sustainable ecosystem services and food security under adverse environmental conditions (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000797). The funding source had no involvement in or influence on the design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data or the writing and submission process.
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Trnka, M., Bartošová, L., Grammatikopoulou, I. et al. The Possibility of Consensus Regarding Climate Change Adaptation Policies in Agriculture and Forestry among Stakeholder Groups in the Czech Republic. Environmental Management 69, 128–139 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01499-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01499-2