Assessing Climate Change Vulnerability in Rural Areas: Cases of Apple Farming in 4 Municipals in Gyeonggi Province, Korea

Abstract

Climate change poses a major threat to the environment, economic and social components in agricultural sector in rural communities. If rural agricultural communities are to respond adequately to future climate change, they will require to develop adaptation measure and to do so, it is required to assess vulnerability in their communities. One of the most notable climate change impact in Korean agricultural communities is that fruit cultivation sites are moving northward. In the past, apple cultivation was not preferred in the Gyeonggi province. However, with changing climate, farmers in Icheon and Gapyeong in Gyeonggi province started to cultivate apple. In addition, governmental support through apple cultivation promoting projects increased apple cultivation in the province in recent years. This paper aims to assess climate change vulnerabilities of 4 apple cultivation communities in Gyeonggi province by developing vulnerability indices as function of climate exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Using z-score normalization, the quantitative analysis was conducted in this study. The main results of vulnerability assessments are founded as follow: Icheon and Gapyeong showed higher vulnerability by higher level of exposure and sensitivity to changing climate than Paju and Yeoncheon. However, adaptive capacity showed that Paju and Yeoncheon as more vulnerable than the Icheon and Gapyeong. Therefore, the study concludes that albeit the same crops cultivated in one province, for effective local-level adaptation measures, identifying components comprising the vulnerability in the community is required. Vulnerability assessment using indices should provide quantitative backgrounds to develop appropriate and effective agricultural community adaptation measures.