Climate change perception among peasants: role of road infrastructure and cooperatives

Climate change has been aserious environmental threat and has already harmed people and ecosystem across the globe. One of the ways to cope with the climate change can be through increasing farmers’ awareness about climate change and motivating them to adopt the suitable measures to increase the resilience against the climate change. Using a case study from Nepal, the present study explores the importance of access to roads and farmers’ association with the cooperatives towards increasing the climate change awareness among rural farmers. We sampled 300 rural households from three districts (Mugu, Dailekh and Banke) that represents agro-ecological diversity (mountain, hill and terai) of Nepal. Results from binary logistic regressions shows that the households located close to the motorable roads are likely to be more aware of the climate change. Households affiliated with the cooperatives are more likely to perceive the climate change. While higher savings from crop incomes have positive influence towards climate change perception, higher savings from livestock are less likely to perceive climate change. Findings of the study underscores the improvement of road infrastructure and formation of cooperatives which are likely to increase farmers’ awareness towards climate change.