Climatic trends, risk perceptions and coping strategies of smallholder cattle farmers in some villages of Bhutan

Climate change and variability is a global issue, and it affects the small subsistence farmers of Himalayan developing countries like Bhutan. We used a set of semi-structure questionnaire to interview the farmers to understand and analyze local perceptions and reactive responses adapted to climate uncertainties in some villages of Bhutan. Farmers were aware of climate change, and radio and television were identified as the main sources of climate change/global warming related information. In general, farmers have observed rainfall anomalies and prolong dry seasons for the past decades and these were the main threats to their livestock farming. Increased diseases and parasites incidence were also observed, which may be related rising in temperature. Households faced an increasing water shortage and insufficient forage supply that attributed to poor cattle health and cattle production. Farmers are using different coping strategies to adapt to change; these are the plantation of supplementary forage resources, providing concentrated high protein feed and practicing forest grazing. However, we found that adaptation to climate change by Bhutanese farmers' was influenced by socio-economic and political dynamics.