Abstract
Climate change is increasingly recognised as a threat multiplier in agrarian societies, where erratic rainfall, fragile irrigation systems, and crop failures heighten livelihood insecurity and intensify local tensions. Deterministic accounts that portray climate change as an inevitable driver of conflict, however, often overlook community agency and the everyday practices through which households absorb environmental shocks. This article examines a traditional Javanese intercropping system, tumpangsari, as a form of social mitigation that links ecological diversification with cooperation and reciprocal labour. Drawing on comparative qualitative fieldwork in Gunungkidul Regency and Banten Province, the study shows how intercropping reduces dependence on single-crop rice harvests, distributes risk, and embeds informal mechanisms of resource sharing that diffuse grievances before they escalate into open disputes. The analysis contributes to debates on the climate - conflict nexus and environmental peacebuilding by demonstrating how locally embedded agricultural practices can redirect environmental stress towards collective risk management rather than confrontation. It also highlights the limits of such adaptation: tumpangsari often operates within patron - client hierarchies that reproduce unequal access to land and resources, producing functional stability without structural transformation.