Farmers’ beliefs and concerns about climate change, and their adaptation behavior to combat climate change in Saudi Arabia

international climate agreement in 2015 under the aegis of United Nations, commonly known as Paris Agreement. The agreement recognizes climate change as a global problem and there- fore encourages all the countries to undertake collective actions to combat this issue by consid- erably reducing their carbon footprint [38]. At individual level, however, people may hold different beliefs about climate change and its causes. Farmers’ climate change beliefs refer to their acceptance and trust on various explanations of ongoing climate change. Such explana- tions include the ideas that climate change is either happening mainly due to human-induced activities or as a natural phenomenon or both. It also includes the ideas that there is insuffi- cient evidence about climate change or climate change is not happening at all [39,40]. Under- standing farmers’ beliefs about climate change is of considerable importance as they can influence their decisions to adopt certain appropriate climate change adaptation and mitiga- tions measures. Moreover, it can help us predict their adaptation behavior and can assist in formulating effective extension and outreach initiatives for developing resilient food produc- tion systems [39–41]. Farmers’ concerns refer to the feelings of worry about the observed and potential impacts of climate change that can negatively affect agriculture and farm income. A huge body of literature is there that documents various observed and potential impacts associ- ated with climatic changes [3,5,7,10,13,42–45]. The main impacts include drought, heat stress,

flooding, increased incidence of crop diseases, insects and pests, higher weed infestations and invasive weeds, reduction in soil fertility etc. Farmers also confront various obstacles that can restrict their ability to effectively implement climate change adaptation and mitigation strate- gies. The exact nature and extent of theses may vary from region to region and farmer to farmer [42,46]. Across the globe, many studies attempted to analyze farmers’ views and responses to cli- mate change in different countries [47–53]. In Saudi Arabia, majority of the research con- ducted about climate change and its likely impacts during the last decade followed a top-down approach and is attempted to predict the consequences of climate change on local scale. Only a few studies [41,54] directed targeted the farmers in the Northern region of Saudi Arabia. The present study was intended to fill these gaps and was carried out in the Eastern region that is a rather neglected part of the Kingdom in this regard. The study was carried out to achieve the following research objectives: 1. To identify farmers’ beliefs about climate change 2. To identify farmers’ concerns about impacts of climate change 3. To identify farmers’ views regarding various obstacles to adaptation 4. To determine differences in farmers’ beliefs, concerns and views about obstacles to adapta- tion due to demographic characteristics 2. Methodology 2.1. Description of the study area This study was conducted in the Al-Ahsa governorate of the Kingdom. It is part of the Eastern

Province of the Kingdom, which comprises of 11 different governorates. In terms of area, East- ern Province is the largest region of the Kingdom and third most populous after the Riyadh and Makkah provinces. The total population of the Eastern Province is around 0.514 million; the population of Al-Ahsa governorate is about 0.2 million [55]. Al-Ahsa is the largest gover- norate of the Eastern Province. It has the world’s largest oases and is an important area for date palm production. It is a green governorate and contains fertile lands in the Eastern Prov- ince [56]. Fig 1 shows map of the study area. PLOS ONE Adaptation of climate change among farmers PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280838 January 25, 2023 3 / 20