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This critical review paper expands on the meaning of place. It opens a new narrative on how the geographic concept of place is conceptualized in smallholder farmers and climate change adaptation literature in Sub-Saharan Africa. The review suggested that place is not only the 'where' of a location but a location geographically connected and interdependent to illustrate how smallholder farmers' experiences in adapting to climate shocks interact with global efforts such as improving food security, eliminating poverty and building sustainable rural livelihood. Through the various climate change adaptation strategies exhibited by different farmer groups, the paper demonstrated that people in places have the agency to make choices that control their destinies irrespective of whatever global force overwhelms them. The paper argues sense of place expressed through ecological place meaning shapes people's intuition, beliefs, actions and experiences as illustrated by smallholders' perception of the determinant and barriers to effective adaptation strategies. The ecological place meaning also influences the 'glocalization' of climate impact on agroecological-based livelihoods at different locations and how maladaptive outcomes are perceived. Place gives people identity by (re)shaping actions and experiences and vice versa. There is an undeviating relationship between power, place and people's experience. Further exploration of the relationship between lifeworld experiences, people, and power is central in understanding the meaning of place in smallholder farmers and climate change interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on perceptions of climate change impacts contributes to understanding motivations for adaptation action and increases the legitimacy of climate adaptation research and policy. The body of literature on climate change perception (CCP) is extensive. Given that the perception of climate change is commonly presented as being dependent on an individual's sociocultural and spatial contexts and that climate change is an abstract concept with different dimensions of meaning, this paper systematizes the research in an actor-centered manner. Using a systematic literature review, the abstracts from 821 interdisciplinary studies on CCP were coded and statistically analyzed. The results show that predominantly knowledge about the CCP of vulnerable groups of actors and regions was generated using quantitative methods. Impacts at the collective and institutional levels of CCP were rarely explored. This indicates an individualizing perspective of research on climate adaptation of vulnerable actors. Conclusions for future research are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporting resilience is a common goal of natural resource management, but managing under changing conditions that requires adaptation is a modern challenge. A state-of-the-art framework for implementing an integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA), the NOAA IEA approach, is used as an example to demonstrate whether and how assessment in ecosystem-based management (EBM), as often implemented in fisheries, can be expected to facilitate planned adaptation. Using comparisons with another assessment framework developed for implementing a climate change adaptation project, the United Nations Development Programme-Global Environment Facility Adaptation Policy Framework (UNDP-GEF APF), this paper expands and operationalizes the concepts of managing for resilience versus change in EBM as presented by West et al.(2009). It first introduces a variety of terms from climate change adaptation literature to help institutionalize "planned adaptation" as a useful concept within fisheries, then presents an expanded map of adaptive management processes in EBM. Finally, it proposes steps for enhancing processes supporting planned adaptation in individual applications of EBM in fisheries. Steps include (i) recognizing interest and funding for adaptation planning as prerequisites, (ii) evaluating what information or actors are lacking to implement better planning, and (iii) determining what institutional processes within an adaptive management cycle need augmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on barriers to climate change adaptation has largely focused on non-climatic barriers and has provided less insight into climate-induced barriers. Responding to this lacuna, this paper examines the connections between climate change and agricultural adaptation strategies of smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. Results from the qualitative fieldwork show that climatic changes have been accompanied by increases in climate change extremes (CCEs) over the last three decades. In order to adapt, smallholder farmers use improved crop varieties and other support strategies. Paradoxically, however, CCEs have undermined these strategies in several instances, causing crop yields to fall short of their actual potential and leading to financial indebtedness. Therefore, the results showcase that overcoming non-climatic barriers to the uptake of agricultural adaptation strategies is a necessary but insufficient condition for achieving successful adaptation outcomes. This is the case since new barriers to the adaptation process are constantly emerging, and CCEs are an example of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]