Building Local Strategies for the Adaptation to Climate Change of Farming Livelihoods. Review of a Participatory Approach Applied in Mesoamerica.

Currents impacts of climate change on Mesoamerican ecosystems and rural communities are undeniable, as evidenced by scientific studies (Castellanos et al., 2013;Harvey et al., 2015; Robalino, Jiménez, & Chacón, 2015) and the perception of smallholder farmers (Forero, Hernández, & Zafra, 2014; Vélez-Torres, Santos-Ocampo, Tejera-Hernández, & Monterroso-Rivas, 2016). Livelihood diversification and local organization are strategies with which rural families in the region have faced high natural climatic variability for hundreds of years (Altieri, 2013), but increase in the rate of change and intensity of drought conditions and climate variability, plus unprecedented pressures on natural ecosystems and agricultural systems, make adaptation increasingly difficult (Baethgen, Meinke, & Giménez, 2003).