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Paper short abstract:

I would like to bring knowledge in the field of climate change adaptation by offering insights into adaptation strategies implemented by vulnerable high mountainous smallholder communities in the global south. I am excited to share my findings and provide valuable information to the participants.

Paper long abstract:

The contemporary challenge, climate change is the most noticeable phenomenon in the high mountains of Pakistan. This study seeks to examine the smallholder’s climate change adaptation in land-based livelihoods in the high mountainous Western Karakoram region of Pakistan. By interviewing 430 randomly selected smallholders through a structured household survey this study found that over the past 20 year’s majority (88.6 %) of smallholders have perceived significant variations in climatic conditions. Results further revealed that about (88 %) of sampled smallholders reported adverse impacts of climate change on land-based livelihoods in the form of crop/horticulture diseases, a decrease in the amount of water for irrigation during spring and a reduction in the quality of fruits and crops. Results also indicate that smallholder’s implement diverse adaptation strategies to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. The widely practiced adaptation strategies reported by smallholders were the use of chemical fertilizers (91.4 %) followed by practicing crop rotation (88.4 %), shifting to horticulture from crop production (81.2 %) and soil conservation techniques (7.6 %). Moreover, the Chi-square results present that smallholder’s decision for adaptation is significantly influenced by factors like gender (P=0.000), education (P=0.000), tenancy status (P=0.005) and cropping zones (P=0.000) respectively. Likewise, factors like poverty, lack of knowledge, lack of technology and lack of access to credit were major identified barriers to climate change adaptation in the study area. The findings suggest designing locally context-specific climate adaptation strategies that would enable smallholders to strengthen their resilience to cope with climate change.