Local adaptive capacity to climate change in mountainous agricultural areas in the eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon)

The potential capacity of an agricultural community to adapt to climate change is directly related to several indicators, mainly the initial state of local farmers' perceptions to climate and adaptation, the socio-economy, the space and biophysical characteristics, the institutional efficiency, and the technological aspects. Adaptive capacity reflects directly on the ease or difficulty of the current and future adaptation processes of a system. In this study, the adaptive capacity in mountain agriculture is weighed in 4 different zones of Mount-Lebanon on the East coast of the Mediterranean Sea, one of the most vulnerable hot spots to climate change worldwide. The assessment was based on a multi-criteria analysis of the key indicators of local adaptive capacity, assisted by a survey conducted on 378 farmers (apple growers) in the study area consisting of 24 villages grouped in 4 clusters. Results show that, while presenting a variation between the 4 clusters, the local adaptive capacity is weak and less than the average for the concerned area of study in general. None of the considered zones concurrently had the highest score for all the assessed criteria and each cluster had its own strong potency indicators. The overall comparative approach reveals that the local potential for adaptation to climate change in agriculture, specifically apple growing, is the highest in the Bcharreh cluster area compared to the three other clusters of Aqoura, Mayrouba and Jouar el Hoz.