New Determinants for Understanding the Scope of Rurality: Representations of Climate Change in Peasant Faming

Abstract

Currently the rural territories represent a major challenge for decision makers and academics, specially concerning to the analysis and the planification strategies. Regarding to Chile, the lack of planification instruments, the economic system pressure and the sociodemographic configuration changes make a shared definition of rurality imperative. Rural areas in Chile, specifically those with an agricultural vocation, have undergone profound transformations in recent decades, generated mainly by the agro-export economic model and the consequent liberalization in the use of agricultural land, leading to both, environmental degradation and transformation of livelihoods. To this the environmental changes associated with climate change, are imposing the farmers to reanalyze the production systems and the territory linkage. This study contributes to the understanding of the interaction that take place in rural areas, analyzing them from the perspective of the evolution of agricultural practices associated with climate change scenarios. Data were collected through the application of semi-structured surveys to a group of farmers concerning their climate change understanding representations and the strategies that they are
developing to address it. The results give account of an incidence of environmental disturbance associated with the climate change, for example water scarcity or changes in temperature regimes over several parameters, such as the local agricultural practices, the relationships between actors and development strategies. In addition to farmers' perceptions have on climate change, the redefinition of the productive system would explain the changes transformations in their relationship with other actors and with their own territory.