Social perception of the climate change. Study in coastal communities of Cienfuegos province

Abstract

This study constitutes one of the results of the Project "Evaluation of the socioeconomic and cultural impacts of the climate change in coastal areas of Cienfuegos province", belonging to the National Program of the Climate Change in Cuba. The goal of the study is to know the current state of the social perception about climate change phenomenon that the coastal communities of the country has, on the base of the design and validation of methodological tools for this purpose. The article exposes results of a diagnosis carried out in seven communities of the territory. In the study we combined quantitative and qualitative methodologies, guaranteeing the complementarity of the methods and the technical of both. The applied theoretical methods (deductive-inductive, analytical-synthetical, and hypothetical-deductive) allowed to integrate the field work results with the theoretical interpretations of the work. The empiric methods (case study and statistical), accompanied the diagnosis and prosecution of the basic information of the study. The main result is a diagnosis of the current social perception that Cienfuegos society has about the phenomenon of the climate change integrating the knowledge, the valuation and people's attitude in front of this problem, what constitutes an indicator of the participation´s capacity of the society and an instrument for designing a policy and strategies of adaptation to the phenomenon. By way of conclusion it confirms a theoretical and methodological importance of these studies, to understand the complexity of the social factor treatment before the perspectives of the climate modification.