An Ecosystem Services Approach to Sustainable Livelihoods in the Homegardens of Kandy,Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

The Kandyan homegardens, or forest gardens, of central Sri Lanka are diverse, smallholder agroforestry ecosystems that for 2000 years have reflected evolving environmental, economic, and social livelihood needs. An ecosystem services approach interrogated homegarden changes over the last 10 years in 31 Kandyan households. Livelihood strategies favouring homegardens were found to have broader benefits across household, national, and global scales than those favouring commercial simplification or those abandoning cultivation for alternative incomes. Livelihood benefits beyond income included resilience to economic and environmental shocks; food security; and higher stocks of biological and agricultural diversity. This revealed overlooked socio-ecological feedbacks between drivers that frustrated interventions to sustain homegarden livelihoods, including increased wild animal incursions thwarting household climate adaptation and disaster recovery; global organic and fair trade incentives reducing food security and livelihood resilience; and national seed and animal regulations counteracting homegarden sustainability programs. Despite these pressures, households maintained homegarden systems for their cultural, aesthetic and eating preferences. An ecosystem services approach can complement sustainable livelihood approaches by identifying overlooked environmental and cultural benefits; reveal livelihood feedbacks from drivers of ecosystem change; avoid unintended consequences from interventions; and capitalise on synergies between stakeholder priorities.     

Constructing Risk: multi-scale change,livelihoods and vulnerability in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Change has been at the heart of the livelihoods concept since its inception, allowing for a clear focus on how people perceive, respond to and experience risk. The ardent focus on ‘the local’ within livelihoods work, both in research and programmatic terms, has to some extent overshadowed attention on the role of wider-scale political economic and environmental processes in generating change and determining responses to change. Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta have never been ‘local’, having long been historically embedded in international, regional and national economic, political and environmental transformations. Drivers of change at these wider scales have intensified, complicating local responses to change, whether through economic, social or political means. A more nuanced appreciation of how scaled relations can be supported is required to better anticipate and respond to the political ecology of risk.     

Community resilience,natural hazards,and climate change: Is the present a prologue to the future?

ABSTRACT

The nexus of natural hazards, climate change, and community resilience poses both conceptual and methodological challenges. One key consideration is the underlying notion of dynamic change or transformation in the systems that affect community resilience—social systems, natural systems, technological systems—and the degree to which the interdependencies influence who is resilient, to what, where, and to whom. The article examines community resilience from the broad perspective of affluent societies and illustrates the considerable variability in both the temporal and spatial nature of community resilience to natural hazards in the short term, and climate changes in the longer term, especially in more affluent societies. The author finds that, given the rapidity of environmental, social, economic, political, technological, and cultural changes, present circumstances and remedies may not be adequate predictors or precursors of future conditions. She concludes that the challenges associated with community resilience, natural hazards, and climate change require transformational thinking and action if achievements are to be made in terms of significant disaster risk reduction and any semblance of a sustainable future when extreme weather events will be the norm, not the exception.     

Climate change in the Arctic: current and future vulnerability in two Inuit communities in Canada

Climate change is already occurring in the Arctic and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment recently concluded that future climate change could be devastating for Inuit. This paper characterises vulnerability to climate change in two Inuit communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, focusing on the resource harvesting sector. In both communities, Inuit have demonstrated significant adaptability in the face of current changes in climatic conditions. This adaptability is facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, strong social networks, flexibility in resource use, and institutional support. Changing Inuit livelihoods, however, have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity and have resulted in emerging vulnerabilities. Global and regional climate projections indicate that climatic conditions which currently pose risks are expected to be negatively affected by future climate change. These projections are not without precedent and analysis of current vulnerability and identification of adaptation constraints by Inuit in the two communities indicate the continued importance of traditional coping mechanisms. The ability to draw on these coping mechanisms in light of future climate change, however, will be unequal and the research indicates that young Inuit and those without access to economic resources, in particular, are vulnerable.     

Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin

This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors – and the interaction between the two – affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Our findings indicate that economic change brought about by structural adjustment policies pressures rural people to alter their approach to farming, which makes it more difficult for them to respond to environmental change. For example, smallholder farmers find it difficult to make a transition to commercial farming within the Limpopo Basin, in part because farming techniques that are well adapted to managing environmental variability in the region – such as seeding many small plots – are not well suited to the economies of scale needed for profitable commercial agriculture. People use a variety of strategies to cope with interactive environmental and economic stressors and shocks, but many face considerable constraints to profitably exploiting market-based opportunities. We conclude that economic stressors and shocks may now be causing small-scale agriculture to be less well adapted to ecological and climate variability, making smallholders more vulnerable to future climate change. Some local level policy interventions, including those that support and build on local environmental knowledge, could assist rural agricultural societies in adapting to future environmental change in the context of economic globalisation.     

杭州市农民工生计脆弱性特征与对策

农民工是我国大城市中的弱势群体之一,极易受到失业、生产事故、经济波动等社会风险的冲击,其生计日益成为影响我国经济社会转型期国计民生的重要问题之一。本文从脆弱性视角出发,建立了符合城市农民工生计特征的生计资本评估指标体系,并结合实地调查资料对杭州市农民工生计脆弱性特征及成因进行了分析。研究认为,杭州农民工生计资本具有典型的脆弱性特征,突出表现在教育培训缺失、人力资本不足,租房生活为主、物质资本薄弱,收入水平低下、金融资本虚化,边缘感较强、社会资本匮乏。最后,探讨了可持续生计分析框架在大城市农民工生计问题研究中的适用性,并结合实证研究结果提出了增强大城市农民工生计资本降低其生计脆弱性的调控对策,以期为杭州市及我国其他大城市农民工生计可持续性研究提供新的分析思路和实践参考。     

Assessing vulnerability to climate change and socioeconomic stressors in the Reef Islands group,Solomon Islands

This article assesses the vulnerability to climatic and socioeconomic stresses in the Reef Islands, Solomon Islands, an atoll island group in the Southwest Pacific. Climate change and the associated sea-level rise are often seen as the most pressing challenges to atoll communities, yet this study aims at critically re-assessing this view by placing climate in the context of a range of other internal and external stressors affecting local livelihoods, including population growth, inadequate land use practices, and lack of economic potential, as well as external factors such as poorly developed infrastructure, economic marginalization and weak governance of Solomon Islands. Findings suggest that some of these non-climatic stresses are currently – and in the short term – more important determinants of local vulnerability than climate change and sea-level rise. Certainly, these stresses are likely to be exacerbated by different elements of climate change in the short, medium and long term, but generally speaking climate change does not appear to be a major driver of the current changes in the islands. On the basis of these observations, the possible adaptation options, relevant to different time scales, are discussed.     

中国农户可持续生计研究进展及趋向

开展农户可持续生计研究,对于解决农村贫困问题,促进农村社会经济可持续发展具有重要意义。在查阅大量相关文献的基础上,本文首先阐述了可持续生计的概念,并对国外农户可持续生计研究概况进行了简介;然后从生计资产(资本)研究、生计脆弱性分析、生计策略研究、政策、机构和过程对农户生计影响研究、农户生计与生态环境的相互关系研究等5 个方面对近年来国内农户生计的主要研究进展进行了归纳总结。最后,提出了中国农户可持续生计研究的主要趋向:跨学科综合性、系统性研究,新技术方法的综合与动态研究,农户可持续生计与贫困问题研究,城乡转型期农户可持续生计研究,重点区域的农户可持续生计研究。     

区域气候变化脆弱性综合评估研究进展

区域脆弱性评估为脆弱性地区农户摆脱贫困、区域持续发展和政府制定适应策略提供科学依据.由于区域内部人地系统的复杂性,区域的脆弱性定量评估较为困难.中国脆弱性研究起步较晚,关注较早的是脆弱性区域的分布,但对区域内脆弱人群的脆弱性研究较少,认识上的不足影响了国家和地方政府制定科学的适应政策和措施.本文介绍了对脆弱性的认识,梳...     

The Dynamic Pathways of Agrarian Transformation in the Northeastern Thai–Lao Borderlands

ABSTRACT

Rural livelihoods in the northeastern Thai borderlands have moved away from being predominantly agrarian, yet farming remains a desirable alternative for many people. The empirical findings from fieldwork in a village in the northeastern Thai–Lao borderlands indicate how dependence on agriculture is determined by family contexts, such as land ownership, education level of household members, their gender and age. Cheap Lao labour and government price-support policies have enabled farmers to remain in production and diversify. Some educated rural people have successfully found employment opportunities outside the village as migratory wage labour, and are able to attain higher social status back in the village. Successful migrants have invested their earnings on cash-crop production and become rural entrepreneurs. Conversely, less educated migrants were unsuccessful in finding good jobs in the city and viewed agriculture as a more favourable alternative and valuable security. Geographical, cultural and economic specificities conditioned rural transformation and contributed to increasingly diverse and geographically extended livelihoods.     

Resettlement and Climate Impact: addressing migration intention of resettled people in west China

ABSTRACT

The relationship between climate change and human displacement is an important topic of global concern. China is a special case due to a high level of government control enforcing the ecological migration of millions of people since the mid-1980s. Little research has addressed how resettled people adapt to climate impacts in ecologically vulnerable resettlement areas and what factors influence their intentions to relocate again or adapt locally. Employing a social-ecological system approach, this study builds a conceptual econometric framework which differentiates two steps that drive migration intention at the household level. The study uses this approach to examine the role of both contextual and household factors in motivating the migration intentions of resettled people in the largest environmental resettlement area of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, where household survey data were collected in 2012. This framework enabled an analysis, first, of how local contextual factors and household factors shape the severity of climate impacts on households and, second, how these factors interact with the experience of climate impacts to further influence a household’s migration intention as a response to climate impacts. The results show that some contextual factors (such as limited use of water-saving techniques, little practice of cultivating aridity-resistant crops, and lack of government support), strong local social networks and being in receipt of low rates of financial remittances have significant associations with adverse climate impacts experienced by resettled households, and also with their anticipated further relocation to respond to these impacts.     

青藏高原东部样带农牧民生计脆弱性评估

脆弱性评估为脆弱性地区农户摆脱贫困、区域可持续发展提供科学依据。以青藏高原东部样带为例,基于可持续生计框架,建立了农牧民生计脆弱性评估的指标体系,利用11个乡镇的879户农牧民样本数据,开展了不同地带生计脆弱性评估。该指标体系反映了农牧民面临的主要风险,其生计资产,以及农牧民和政府应对风险的措施。结果表明:高原区农牧民生计脆弱性程度高于山原区和高山峡谷区。高原区的满掌乡最为脆弱,即便有政府的帮助,农牧民也不能应对风险。脆弱性程度高的山原区上部和高原区,处于不能适应的边缘,如不采取措施,当地牧民将不能应对气候变化、草地退化、药材退化等多种风险。导致该区牧民生计脆弱的原因既有各种风险的冲击,也因牧民自身生计资产和适应能力的不足。高山峡谷区和山原区下部的乡镇,农牧民能有效地应对风险,需进一步拓宽第二、第三产业就业渠道。因此,高原区和山原区上部的纯牧区是脆弱区域,政府应采取积极的措施,增强农牧民的适应能力。政府的救助措施应从改善自然资产转变到改善人力资产和金融资产,如技能培训、实行医保和畜病防治全覆盖、提供低息和无息贷款、在黑土滩区全面实行退牧还草、对退化草场进行治理和恢复。     

‘Rising Waters Don't Lift All Boats’: a sustainable livelihood analysis of recursive cycles of vulnerability and maladaptation to flood risk in rural Bihar,India

ABSTRACT

Bihar, in the central Gangetic Basin, is simultaneously India's poorest and most flood-prone State. Climate change models currently identify a heightening of Bihar's flood risk, as rainfall patterns become more intense and Himalayan glaciers recede. During the past half century, the major strategy deployed by the State and national governments to address the risk of floods has involved the construction of embankments: raised areas of land that seek to control river flow and provide temporary sanctuaries for flood-affected populations. In this article, qualitative data from interviews with flood-affected villagers and policy makers at local, district and State levels are used to assess the social implications of embankments as an adaptive response to flood risk. Evidence from these testimonies leads us to conceptualise embankments as contributing to recursive cycles of vulnerability, in which women, children and poorer social segments have been unwitting bearers. Hence, reliance on embankments is a maladaptation that perpetuates, if not exacerbates, the severe manifestations of social and economic inequality that continue to plague rural Bihar. Perhaps not surprisingly, the voices of those whose lives have been made more difficult by embankments are heard all too infrequently in policy debates. This emphasises the need for climate adaptation initiatives to be anchored in a sustainable livelihood approach, for which the prime analytical objective is to understand the factors that enable or constrain the abilities of people, especially those who are most vulnerable, to make decisions about their lives.     

The role of personal experiences in Norwegian perceptions of climate change

ABSTRACT

It is commonly assumed that personal experiences of a changing climate will influence people’s attitudes to the extent that they will be more likely to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change as a real threat and therefore be more willing to accept both mitigation and adaptation efforts. In the article, the authors examine how survey participants’ personal experiences of extreme events and climate-related changes in the natural environment influenced their perceptions of climate change. Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted in Norway in 2015 and the results of logistic regressions, the authors find that individual observations of changes in nature were linked to higher levels of concern with regard to climate change, as well as to attitudes that were more positive towards personal mitigation and adaption efforts. Somewhat counter-intuitively, they also find that participants who had personally experienced a natural hazard event were less concerned about climate change compared with participants without such experiences. The authors conclude that personal experience of the consequences of climate change may in some cases have a limited effect on enhancing people’s concerns about climate change.     

Climate-Change Journalism and “Edgeball” Politics in Contemporary China

ABSTRACT

Climate change is a complex and uncertain phenomenon, requiring political approaches that can find compromise and incorporate feedback from experience, as well as harness the role of civil society in holding governments to account. It thus presents an unusual challenge for China, the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter and an authoritarian regime, which tends to avoid the inclusion of non-state actors in governance. Drawing on ethnographic research among contemporary Chinese environmental journalists, this article suggests that climate change, as a destabilizing phenomenon with nonlinear and uncertain dynamics, can be drawn upon to develop a pluralistic political position that may run counter to such authoritarian approaches. It shows that Chinese journalists can create in climate reporting a space where outcomes are not known in advance, and where people therefore might generate political positions that challenge dominant narratives around science, technology, and the environment.     

REDD+ and incentives: An analysis of income generation in forest-dependent communities of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve,Ecuador

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is considered a promising strategy to slow down deforestation rates, promote sustainable forest use, and support rural livelihoods under the umbrella of climate change mitigation. However, so far there is only little field-based knowledge on how REDD+ can go along with subsistence-based production systems and livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. We addressed this research gap by analyzing the income generation of three widespread ethnic groups (Colonists, Shuar, Kichwa) in the buffer zone of the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador to better understand their livelihoods and possible engagement in REDD+. We selected two communities of each ethnic group (close-to and far-from markets) and used household surveys to (a) calculate household incomes, (b) assess the degree of forest-dependency, and (c) discuss how REDD+ schemes can be designed along with traditional subsistence-based production systems. We found that the studied indigenous communities have a higher degree of forest-dependency and higher environmental income compared to Colonists. However, our assumption that close-to-market communities have a lower degree of forest dependency and higher cash income due to better market access and labor opportunities applies only to the Colonists and Shuar, but must be rejected for the Kichwas who gain income from timber sale. Despite these differences, all communities receive high off-farm revenues from unskilled labor provided by oil-companies and external aid. Therefore, dependency on agriculture and forestry is temporarily reduced. Under these circumstances, REDD+ provides only weak financial incentives so that the willingness to participate in REDD+ is low.     

Land desertification and restoration in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is characterized by high population growth, degraded and fragile nat-ural ecosystems, and a limited amount of arable lands. It is one of the most water-sc...     

The poor peasant: One label,different lives. The dynamics of rural livelihood strategies in the Gia-Kajelo community,Northern Ghana

The literature on rural dwellers or peasants has for long been characterised by homogeneous treatment of the label 'peasant'. This article adds to the voices of those who recognise and explore the diversity and dynamism of rural places and try to incorporate these in the explanation of meaning and realities. Peasants are a heterogeneous group of people engaged in multiple activities and with multiple characteristics. The article exposes the dynamic and complex nature of rural places by examining the survival/livelihood strategies of peasants using a four-category wealth-ranking scheme. Poverty in the Gia-Kajelo community of Northern Ghana, in conjunction with the difficult physical environment, has led to a multiplicity of livelihood paths. In this article it is argued that the livelihoods of peasants constitute dynamic, complex and diverse paths. The paths chosen by peasants in pursuit of food security and secure livelihoods are dynamic in response to changing economic, political and environmental conditions. Households and individuals vary in their emphasis and choices of strategies, according to their entitlements within the wider socio-political and economic context and their internal structure in terms of size, composition and capital.     

Using a migration systems approach to understand the link between climate change and urbanisation in Malawi

Most scholarship on rural–urban migration in Sub-Saharan Africa demonstrates that migrants tend to move in a “circular” fashion and only spend short periods of time in cities before returning home to rural villages. However, some scholars working on the impacts of climate change on migration suggest that deteriorating environmental conditions may undermine rural livelihoods and lead people to move to cities for longer periods of time. If this is true, then climate change threatens to accelerate urbanisation and lead to renewed stress on urban infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to explore these positions and we do so by collecting survey [n = 241], in-depth interview [n = 75] and focus group [n = 123 participants] data from rural and urban Malawi. Two key results stand out as significant. The first is that migrants in Malawi's capital city tend to stay in the urban environment for longer periods of time than conventional understandings of migration would predict. The second key result is that climate change may actually lead, in the case of Malawi, to reverse (i.e urban–rural) migration. This is because many of the people in Malawi's cities depend on products produced in rural environments (e.g. food and fuelwood). If climate change undermines rural livelihoods, then many urban residents will find the basis of their livelihoods removed and will likely respond by moving back to rural villages. Overall, our results, therefore, suggest that in at least one case the effect of climate change on migration may not be to increase migration towards cities but to stimulate an exodus from cities and back to the rural countryside.     

城市脆弱性研究评述与展望

当前,脆弱性为可持续性科学研究的热点问题,城市脆弱性是努力实现城市可持续发展急需开展的重要研究内容.基于国内外城市脆弱性研究文献资料的回顾,梳理了城市脆弱性概念、研究分类、分析框架、动力机制和评价方法.目前对城市脆弱性尚未形成统一的概念框架,缺乏完善的评价指标体系,对动力机制与调控的研究不足,缺少对城市耦合系统脆弱性的研究.未来,应在现有城市脆弱性研究基础上,建立综合、可行的评价指标体系,构建综合评价模型,并注重典型区域的城市脆弱性评价,为城市可持续发展提供科学依据.