Drivers of Change in Southern European Agriculture: Online Participatory Approaches for the Analysis of Planned and Autonomous Adaptation Strategies

Together with socio-economic and policy changes, climate change deeply affects sustainable patterns of water management. The presented work explores how online participatory tools can be linked to a decision support system (DSS), in order to set up a web based DSS for assessment and evaluation of autonomous and planned water-saving adaptation strategies in irrigated production systems. Innovative online participatory tools are developed and tested. The paper presents online participation (eParticipation) as a means to establish communication with the main "agents" (farmers) of the socio-ecosystem of interest. This is composed of two phases: (i) assessment of farmers' perceptions of ongoing changes through a preliminary online questionnaire; (ii) development of ad hoc adaptation strategies and their evaluation through a second questionnaire linked to a DSS tool. The article demonstrates that eParticipation is effective in involving stakeholders in decision-support when utilising existing communication channels. Nevertheless, like in other participatory approaches, the problem of self-selection emerges, and the results should be treated carefully when it comes to statistical conclusions and political decisions.