Climate Stress Inertia: A Policy Messaging Response to Farmer Powerlessness and Passivity Cognitions in Drought Extremes in a Jamaican Case Study

ABSTRACT

Increased climate extremes have led to climate policymakers producing messaging with alarmist undertones in public education and policy documents. While such urgent messaging aims to encourage adaptive action, little is understood about the effectiveness of such communication approaches on the schemas, perceptions, and actions of climate frontline workers, such as farmers. Given these gaps, this paper conducts a preliminary assessment of selected Jamaican agroclimate policy documents using keyword matching techniques associated by farmers with increased passivity in selected agriculturally intensive farming communities across Clarendon, Jamaica using a sequential-exploratory mixed-method approach. Building on multinomial logistic regression results that indicate farmer inaction being linked with increased actual and perceived climate stress (higher temperatures, winds, and long (>5 months’) drought duration), keyword word matching was conducted to decipher the proportion of stress-related words on eleven (11) selected Jamaican climate policy documents. There is significant overlap in the word choice associated with farmer passivity and policy messaging. Simple Linear Regression comparing proportions of selected ‘stress-related’ keywords by year showed an upward trend in alarmist language in Jamaican policy documents, most pronounced post-2010, albeit not statistically significant. The rate of increase in stress language is higher than the rate of increase in empowering themes, such as “adapt” and “mitigate”. Since case study farmers experience apparent cognitive overload when processing extreme climate stress, stress language may produce more counterproductive results than intended. With further research, policy messaging may focus on the empowerment of climate frontline workers, commencing with more emphasis on solution-oriented messaging approaches.

Keywords: Jamaican Climate Policy; Eco-Anxiety; Adaptation; Farmers; Behavioural Decision Research.

The threat and realities of increased climate extremes have led to efforts by climate policymakers and activists globally to produce messaging with alarmist undertones in public education and policy documents, with emphases on ‘stress’ language, including, but not limited to allusions to the potential for irreversible damage. While such urgent messaging is crafted with the aim to encourage adaptive action, there is increasing debate in the literature on what link, if any, stress perceptions have on improving or impeding adaptive action. There has been an upsurge in vignettes published by psychologists on adverse impacts of stress messaging approaches on the psychological well-being of present and future actors, particularly children and youth. (Shellenberger 2019). Among the primary impacts documented include crippling anxiety and powerlessness in response to worry about future climate impacts, leading to the coining of the term ‘eco-anxiety’ (Silwa 2017). Given the Caribbean’s heightened risk to climate extremes owing to its Geographical location, limited land size and fragile economies, alarmist language has naturally been incorporated into local and regional policy, as well as in international advocacy efforts (IISD 2008). However, very limited research has been done thus far in the region on what factors are most relevant to actors in the Caribbean region to drive adaptation, including the potential role and impact of stress schemas on improving or impeding adaptive action.

In view of these gaps, this study conducts a preliminary assessment of selected Jamaican agro-climate policy documents using keyword matching techniques associated by farmers with increased passivity in selected agro-intensive regions. Specifically, this paper addresses two key questions:

1. Has the language in Jamaican climate policy documents become more stress-focused over time?
2. What are the policies within the subset of analysis that have the modal ‘stress-related’ language, compared with the most ‘empowering’ language?

This Jamaican climate policy analysis builds upon mixed-method research exploring factors that influence farmers’ likelihood of adaptive actions in Jamaican case study regions (Buckland et Campbell 2022). Policy keyword selection and subsequent analysis presented in this paper is guided by qualitative farmer feedback and multinomial logistic regression outputs of the factors that most significantly moderate adaptive action, compared with inactivity from this study (Buckland et Campbell 2022).

Farmer feedback (N=423) is primarily obtained from survey data conducted in three (3) communities across distinct micro-climatic zones in Clarendon, Jamaica, following the 2014/2015 drought event: Thompson Town (North), Mocho (Central) and Milk River (South-West). The parish of Clarendon was deemed as a strategic site for this pilot study, as this parish is the fastest expanding agricultural parish in Jamaica, with the island’s first agroeconomic zone, and the most available arable land (Angus 2016; JIS 2010). Additionally, the wellbeing of Clarendon’s agriculturalists has global significance, as this region is a major producer of yellow yams, a commodity of which Jamaica is the largest global exporter (MAF 2013). A sequential-exploratory mixed-method approach was used to perform a preliminary appraisal of selected Caribbean agro-climate policy documents using keyword matching techniques associated by farmers with increased passivity. Farmer feedback was obtained through face-to-face surveys with 423 farming households and other key informants in Jamaica’s agricultural sector across the three Clarendon communities.

Results indicate an upward, but non-significant trend in stress language as the dominant framing of the Jamaican climate policies under study, with the linguistic shift most pronounced post-2010. Other authors have also documented similar shifts in Climate Policy Paradigms evident in other Less Developed Countries (LDCs) (Vij et al. 2018). Although there remains only sparse evidence on the existence of a link between policy language and adaptation practice, in light of the emerging data in the Jamaican context suggesting a link between stress cognitions and passivity and the simultaneous shifts in policy approaches, more research is warranted in this field.

The aforementioned results demonstrate that Jamaican policy messaging emphasizing stress key terms significantly overlaps with factors that have been linked in some Jamaican farming contexts with passivity directly in farmer conversations and indirectly through statistical models.

Since case study farmers experience apparent cognitive overload when processing extreme climate stress, emphases on stress-related language may produce counterproductive results than intended. With further research, policy messaging may focus on the empowerment of climate frontline workers, commencing with more emphasis on a solution-oriented approach to climate messaging, rather than a risk-oriented one. Further research may be required to assess the comparative impacts of empowerment messaging on increased climate action at the farm level.