Synergy of experts’ and farmers’ responses in climate-change adaptation planning in Serbia

The risks in agriculture due to climate change are highly specific because they largely depend on the agricultural system, latitude, topography, disposition, and other local conditions. As such, it is difficult to decide which mitigation and adaptation measures are the most suitable in a given country and which should be prioritized in planning and implementation. The objective of the paper is to present farmer and expert rankings of potential adaptation measures in Serbia's agriculture, to compare the two perspectives, and to propose priority measures. Twenty-four measures are identified as most appropriate for adaptation to climate change in Serbia. Farmers (141) provided feedback on priority measures by responding to an online questionnaire, while experts evaluated the measures through a two-stage multicriteria decision-making analysis (MCDA). Applying AHP, ten experts first assessed seven criteria identified as most relevant, including: level of responsibility, category, implementation timeframe, multifunctionality, technical skills, cost-benefit ratio, and the mitigation effectiveness of the measure. In the second stage, the measures were evaluated against the criteria and ranked by TOPSIS. The outcomes of the study indicate that the MCDA ranking was slightly different from that resulting from farmers’ feedback. There is direct agreement on two of the first five priority measures (use of multi-purpose river reservoirs for water supply and agricultural technologies), and six of the first 10 measures – the most closely ranked are irrigation and antihail netting. However, there is a considerable difference in the case of measures that farmers and stakeholders do not recognize as significant because they either do not see a direct benefit for them (e.g. restoration of wetlands or vegetation and afforestation to prevent flooding or erosion), or they cannot implement the measures due to topography (e.g. use of drainage ditches for irrigation). The applied methodology shows that planning of adaptation measures requires consultation of experts in different fields and appreciation of numerous criteria, in order for decisions to be sustainable and applicable in practice. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd