Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Fisherfolks on Climate Change Awareness and Adaptation in Lake Sampaloc of San Pablo City, Laguna, Philippines

Community's response to climate change will vary depending on their specific location, economic status, and level of vulnerability. Given that not all communities are equally capable and there is no perfect or single response to climate change that is effective for all communities. Thus, practices at household level are an essential precursor in dealing with the said phenomena. Specifically, this study aimed to determine the respondents’ socio-demographic and economic factors; identify the respondents’ knowledge about and behavior towards climate change; assess the respondents’ climate change adaptation strategies; and analyze selected factors influencing the respondents’ level of awareness and adaptation strategies on climate change. A KAP (knowledge, attitudes, and practices) survey on climate change was constructed, validated, pre-tested, and employed to the 30 purposively selected fisherfolks residing in the five barangays around Lake Sampaloc. Descriptive statistics, Spearman’s Rank Correlation and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Test were used. Most of the respondents were aware of climate change, social media platform as their source of information, and perceived extreme weather events as the effect of climate change like drought. All of the respondents displayed a positive behavior on their knowledge, attitudes and practices as evident with a high level of overall mean score. High awareness level and strong positive attitude of the respondents towards climate change is a good indication that they are more likely to express willingness to act on this global problem. Awareness found to be statistically significant with knowledge and practices which proved that awareness is necessary in determining knowledge and practices among people