The capacity of albanian smallholders to adapt to climate change

This paper is intended to provide an overview of the importance of adaptation to climate change and to present the adaptive capacities of Albania smallholders. Extreme weather events for example floods in winter and droughts in summer are occurring more frequently and inducing big losses in rural areas of Albania. Climate change poses the risk of much greater impacts in Albanian farms due to its demonstrated conditions and low level of adaptive capacities. Overall the questionnaires resulted that smallholders in Albania besides; poor irrigation system; insufficient use of water resources; high production cost, are now suffering from an increase of extreme weather events throughout the year. From the interviews of 185 smallhoders in the Shkodra region and discussion with15 experts, we concluded that smallholders had faced many challenges as result of changes of climate patterns and showed low level of adapting capacities. As a consequence, according to questionnaires and experts, minimal adaptation measures were taken by both farmers and government hence more governmental intervention was needed.