Agricultural vulnerability to climate change in the Rio das Contas Basin, Brazil

Climate change threats agriculture, mainly in developing countries. Understanding the vulnerability of farmers is very important to counteract the negative impacts. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the degree of vulnerability to climate change of farmers of the Rio das Contas Basin, Brazil, based on their degree of sensibility, exposure, and adaptive capacity. Variations in exposure and vulnerability indexes between regional biomes were calculated. The sensibility index was higher than 50% in all municipalities. The exposure index was over 60% in most municipalities. A value of the adaptive capacity index, sufficient to reduce vulnerability, was not observed in any municipality. The vulnerability index was higher than 66% in more than half of the municipalities. Exposure and vulnerability indexes varied with the biome. The vulnerability is the result of high exposure and sensibility combined with low adaptive capacity. This suggests the need for investment to minimize these effects and mitigation activities to counter the negative impacts of future climate variability.