Shifting livelihoods and aging farmers in coastal Taiwan: implications for adaptation pathways of coastal communities

Coastal communities worldwide face mounting pressures from climate change, aging populations, and rural outmigration, yet dominant adaptation frameworks often overlook how these challenges intersect at the local level. This study examines how aging farmers in Taiwan’s southwest coastal region navigate climate-related and socio-economic stressors through two adaptation pathways commonly cited in the literature: livelihood diversification and out-migration. Drawing on a comprehensive livelihood survey of 120 respondents across 14 villages, we adopted an inductive quantitative approach to analyze differences between aquaculture and agriculture farmers, and between emigrant and non-emigrant households. While many challenges are attributed to aging and outward migration rather than directly to climate change, aquaculture farmers reported higher financial losses from extreme events, and half of the emigrant households cited perceived climate-related factors in the decisions of their household or family members to migrate. A factor analysis identified three underlying subjective factors that shape local adaptation pathways: (1) Infrastructure & Support, (2) Financial Stress & Borrowing, and (3) Individual Adaptation & Resource Sufficiency. Findings underscore the need to critically assess how local perceptions and institutional conditions influence adaptation, with broader implications for similarly vulnerable coastal regions in the Global South and beyond.