The real research challenge and my main research purpose is to understand the nature and scope of relationship among climate change, food (in)security of households, and livelihood types and strategies at household level in a rural area. In order to fulfill the purpose, the objective of this research is to identify, analyze and examine the food security and climate change through livelihood of rural households. This objective has four folds. The first is to explore climate change in the study area through households’ climate change perception .The second objective is to understand the most important livelihood assets and livelihood strategies of the rural households. The third objective is to understand who food insecure households are in rural context and what factors do condition and constraint food security. The forth objective is to understand which households are vulnerable to climate change by assessing impacts of climate change on rural households and to examine if food secure households are climate vulnerable or vice versa. The study was carried out in Lalbojhi village in Lowland in Western Nepal. This research is based on multiple theories mainly related to food system; sustainable livelihood framework; and climate change vulnerability. Based on the food system approach, food security in this research is seen in three dimensional perspectives, i.e., food availability, food access, and food utilization. Climate change vulnerability was also studied in three dimensional perspectives, i.e. climate change exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.
The result from the responses of local people shows that in Lalbojhi village clearly indicates that climate in the region has been is changing since during the past 10-15 years. Local people have perceived that summer is getting hotter; winter is getting colder than past 10-15 years shift in summer monsoon, frequent flooding, increasing cold-waves, and incidents of long and intense dry-spells. The perception of those impacts was mainly due to the impact of these climate changes in local people’s livelihood.
Households of Lalbojhi VDC possess different livelihood assets which are the basis of food accessibility, food availability and food utilization. Rich households have strong physical, human and financial resources, whereas medium economy households have average physical and human asset and strong social assets. Poor households have strong natural and social assets. Households are involved in various livelihood activities in order to sustain their household economy which comprises agriculture, livestock, daily-wage labor, foreign employment, and off-farm activities. Agriculture
provides the main source of income for rich households. Households adopt different livelihood strategies to sustain themselves and secure food. Income diversification, collection of edible plants and animals from wild, borrowing food from kin and neighborhood, and exchanging food or bartering goods for food are some of the important strategies of the households in the study area.
The results shows that more than 53% of the total households are food insecure in the study area, and 47% households are food secure households. The food insecure households are further divided into two groups, severely food insecure households which comprises 14% of total households, and moderately food insecure households, which contributes more than 38% households. Among different economic status households, food accessibility, food availability, food utilization and overall food security situation among poor households are worse than medium and rich households. Among different livelihood type households, food accessibility, food availability and food utilization is above the overall average of Lalbojhi VDC in livelihood type I (primary source of income from agriculture) and type VI (mixed sources of income). The livelihood type III (primary source of income from daily-wage labor) has the worst food security situation.
The overall climate change vulnerability index is the highest in poor households making them most vulnerable to climate change, which is followed by rich and medium economy households. Among different Livelihood types, Livelihood type III (primary source of income from daily-wage labor) households have high climate change vulnerability, which is even more than poor economic status households. Livelihood type I and VI households also have high climate change vulnerability level.
The index for different food component is significantly lower when climate change vulnerability level is higher. This shows that climate change affects all aspects of food security. The percentage of severely food insecure households in high level climate change is more than 31%, whereas the percentage of moderately food insecure households is 47% and marginally food secure households are 26.3% and generally food secure households are 2%. The relation of food security and climate change vulnerability level shows that there is more risk to medium and rich households than poor households. The decrease in food security index from low level vulnerability to high level vulnerability is significantly high in medium and rich households. The food security level significantly decreases in Livelihood type I households, Livelihood III households and livelihood VI households. The decrease in food security index in
Livelihood type I households is massive from 68% at low level to 29% at high level. The total household income at decreases significantly in Livelihood I household, making them suffer the most, although the total households income decreases in all livelihood type
The score for physical presence of food at households or stock of food decreases from 32% to 25% from low level vulnerability to high level vulnerability. Similarly, the ability of households to obtain food (food accessibility) is also lower when climate change vulnerability level is high. Food accessibility index is 54% at low level climate change vulnerability and 34% at high level climate change vulnerability. Similarly, the opportunity to intake sufficient nutrient is 59% at low level climate change vulnerability and 46% at high level climate change vulnerability. The overall food security of households at low level climate change vulnerability is 46% and at high level climate change vulnerability, food security level is at 29%.
The research has thus shown that climate change, food security and livelihood of people are interlinked with each other in a cyclic manner. The impact of climate changes are reflected in people’s livelihood assets and livelihood strategies, and these impacts further affect their ability to obtain food, which would decline the amount of food available at home. At the same time the nutrient intake opportunity of households is also dwindle. The cyclic nature of relation is more prominent in poor economy households and house livelihood III households whose main source of income is agriculture based daily-wage. The low level adaptive capacity and high level of sensitivity further worsen the problem in these households.
Key words: Climate change, perception, food security, food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, exposure, sensitivity, adaptation, vulnerability
| Date of Award | 15 Jul 2015 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - City University of Hong Kong
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| Supervisor | Graeme LANG (Supervisor) |
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