Over the years, climate change has unraveled more issues that have affected the agricultural sector, most especially the already vulnerable smallholder farmers who have borne the burden of intensifying climate impacts. Given this urgent matter, the need to prioritize climate services for science-based decision-making and strategic planning has been more pertinent than ever. This paper scrutinizes the type of climate services available to Southeast Asian smallholder farmers and the role these play in climate change adaptation. Guided by the PICoST (Population, Interest, Context, Scope, and Time) approach, only 22 materials published from 2015 to 2022 were identified from a systematic review of Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science (WoS) literature, reflecting a poverty of literature in Southeast Asia despite the region’s high exposure to climatic hazards. From the review, disaster risk management was found to be the recurring theme in the collated literature. Further analysis revealed that smallholder farmers rely on both climate-related information (i.e., rainfall, temperature, wind, etc.) and advisories (i.e., forecasts on thunderstorms, droughts, tropical cyclones, etc.) to guide their farming activities. Findings of this review underscore the relevance of climate services as well as its localization and suggest the inclusion of traditional indicators in climate forecasting.
Keywords: climate services, disaster risk management, informed decision-making, adaptation strategies, meteorological information
Over the years, climate change has unraveled more issues that have affected the agricultural sector, most especially the already vulnerable smallholder farmers who have borne the burden of intensifying climate impacts. Given this urgent matter, the need to prioritize climate services for science-based decision-making and strategic planning has been more pertinent than ever. This paper scrutinizes the type of climate services available to Southeast Asian smallholder farmers and the role these play in climate change adaptation. Guided by the PICoST (Population, Interest, Context, Scope, and Time) approach, only 22 materials published from 2015 to 2022 were identified from a systematic review of Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science (WoS) literature, reflecting a poverty of literature in Southeast Asia despite the region’s high exposure to climatic hazards. From the review, disaster risk management was found to be the recurring theme in the collated literature. Further analysis revealed that smallholder farmers rely on both climate-related information (i.e., rainfall, temperature, wind, etc.) and advisories (i.e., forecasts on thunderstorms, droughts, tropical cyclones, etc.) to guide their farming activities. Findings of this review underscore the relevance of climate services as well as its localization and suggest the inclusion of traditional indicators in climate forecasting.
Keywords: climate services, disaster risk management, informed decision-making, adaptation strategies, meteorological information