Characterising food insecurity in pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Uganda using a consumption coping strategy index

We explore the utility of a consumption coping strategy index (CSI) in characterising and assessing the factors influencing household food insecurity. We assessed 53 pastoral and 197 agro-pastoral households in Nakasongola and Nakaseke districts of Uganda, examining the use of 27 consumption coping strategies over a recall time of two 30-day periods, one at the start of a dry season in 2012 and one at the start of a rainy season in 2013. Four categorical food insecurity status measures were established - food secure (CSI 0 to 5) and mildly (CSI 6 to 20), moderately (CSI 21 to 42) and extremely (CSI >42) food insecure. For the dry season, the mean CSI was 29.4 ± 2.59 and 33.6 % of households were food secure, while for the rains, mean CSI was 33.1 ± 2.30 and 14.0 % of households were food secure. The combination of livelihood system, land holdings, number of livestock owned and belonging to a social network explained 9.4 % to 10 % of the variance in household food insecurity for agro-pastoralists, but variance for pastoralists was not explained by these factors. While the only highly significant factor associated with increasing household food insecurity in the dry season was low landholdings, in the rainy season, it was pastoral livelihood, low livestock holdings for agro-pastoralists and non-involvement in social networks. While our model identified a number of factors important in describing household food insecurity, it explained only about 10 % of the variance

Transformational capacity and the influence of place and identity

Climate change is altering the productivity of natural resources with far-reaching implications for those who depend on them. Resource-dependent industries and communities need the capacity to adapt to a range of climate risks if they are to remain viable. In some instances, the scale and nature of the likely impacts means that transformations of function or structure will be required. Transformations represent a switch to a distinct new system where a different suite of factors become important in the design and implementation of response strategies. There is a critical gap in knowledge on understanding transformational capacity and its influences. On the basis of current knowledge on adaptive capacity we propose four foundations for measuring transformational capacity: (1)how risks and uncertainty are managed, (2)the extent of skills in planning, learning and reorganizing, (3)the level of financial and psychological flexibility to undertake change and (4)the willingness to undertake change. We test the influence of place attachment and occupational identity on transformational capacity using the Australian peanut industry, which is presently assessing significant structural change in response to predicted climatic changes. Survey data from 88% of peanut farmers in Queensland show a strong negative correlation between transformational capacity and both place attachment and occupational attachment, suggesting that whilst these factors may be important positive influences on the capacity to adapt to incremental change, they act as barriers to transformational change

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

Risks from extreme weather events are mediated through state, civil society and individual action 1 , 2 . We propose evolving social contracts as a primary mechanism by which adaptation to climate change proceeds. We use a natural experiment of policy and social contexts of the UK and Ireland affected by the same meteorological event and resultant flooding in November 2009. We analyse data from policy documents and from household surveys of 356 residents in western Ireland and northwest England. We find significant differences between perceptions of individual responsibility for protection across the jurisdictions and between perceptions of future risk from populations directly affected by flooding events. These explain differences in stated willingness to take individual adaptive actions when state support retrenches. We therefore show that expectations for state protection are critical in mediating impacts and promoting longer-term adaptation. We argue that making social contracts explicit may smooth pathways to effective and legitimate adaptation

A Pluralistic Theory of Wordhood

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in

Climate change adaptation to escape the poverty trap: role of the private sector

Climate change adaptation and poverty alleviation call for an integrated strategy, because poverty exacerbates the vulnerability to climate change and vice versa. The private sector, which has traditionally been excluded from adaptation planning, may contribute greatly to the development of an integrated strategy. Here, we identify the differences in adaptation trajectories between the private sector and communities by proposing a conceptual framework and report on a case study in a dryland area of China, where the private sector led a successful adaptation and poverty alleviation project. We found that their win–win strategy achieved both climate change adaptation and development, thereby helping a disadvantaged community to escape the poverty trap and achieve sustainable development. The private sector played a dominant role in the response, as this sector can adapt in ways that are not possible for governments or communities. We suggest that participatory governance that includes private-sector stakeholders is more likely to achieve sustainable development

Trapped in the prison of the mind: notions of climate-induced (im)mobility decision-making and wellbeing from an urban informal settlement in Bangladesh

The concept of Trapped Populations has until date mainly referred to people ‘trapped’ in environmentally high-risk rural areas due to economic constraints. This article attempts to widen our understanding of the concept by investigating climate-induced socio-psychological immobility and its link to Internally Displaced People’s (IDPs) wellbeing in a slum of Dhaka. People migrated here due to environmental changes back on Bhola Island and named the settlement Bhola Slum after their home. In this way, many found themselves ‘immobile’ after having been mobile—unable to move back home, and unable to move to other parts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, or beyond. The analysis incorporates the emotional and psychosocial aspects of the diverse immobility states. Mind and emotion are vital to better understand people’s (im)mobility decision-making and wellbeing status. The study applies an innovative and interdisciplinary methodological approach combining Q-methodology and discourse analysis (DA). This mixed-method illustrates a replicable approach to capture the complex state of climate-induced (im)mobility and its interlinkages to people’s wellbeing. People reported facing non-economic losses due to the move, such as identity, honour, sense of belonging and mental health. These psychosocial processes helped explain why some people ended up ‘trapped’ or immobile. The psychosocial constraints paralysed them mentally, as well as geographically. More empirical evidence on how climate change influences people’s wellbeing and mental health will be important to provide us with insights in how to best support vulnerable people having faced climatic impacts, and build more sustainable climate policy frameworks

Apparent filler–gap mismatches in Welsh

AbstractFiller–gap dependencies involving a clause-initial filler constituent of some kind followed by a matching gap are an important feature of human languages. There are also certain cases where what looks like a filler differs in some way from the following gap. In the case of Welsh there is a mismatch between apparent filler and gap in some nominal cleft sentences. It can be argued, however, that the initial constituent is not a filler but one term of a hidden identity predication. There are various other complexities in this area. There is one word, the identity copula, which only allows a complement that is a gap. There are two cases where a deletion process conceals the identity of the initial constituent in a cleft sentence, making a Progressive Phrase look like a Verb Phrase and a Predicative Phrase look like an Adjective Phrase or a Noun Phrase. Finally, there are three cases where a verb with a gap as a dependent has a special form, two cases involving the predicational copula and one involving all transitive verbs. Thus, a number of mechanisms are required to deal with the full set of facts.</jats:p

Smallholder farmers' adaptation to climate change and determinants of their adaptation decisions in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

Background: The agricultural sector remains the main source of livelihoods for rural communities in Ethiopia, but faces the challenge of changing climate. This study investigated how smallholder farmers perceive climate change, what adaptation strategies they practice, and factors that influence their adaptation decisions. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study, and a multinomial logit model was employed to identify the factors that shape smallholder farmers’ adaptation strategies. Results: The results show that 90% of farmers have already perceived climate variability, and 85% made attempts to adapt using practices like crop diversification, planting date adjustment, soil and water conservation and management, increasing the intensity of input use, integrating crop with livestock, and tree planting. The econometric model indicated that education, family size, gender, age, livestock ownership, farming experience, frequency of contact with extension agents, farm size, access to market, access to climate information and income were the key factors determining farmers’ choice of adaptation practice. Conclusion: In the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia, climate change is a pressing problem, which is beyond the capacity of smallholders to respond to autonomously. Farmers’ capacity to choose effective adaptation options is influenced by household demography, as well as positively by farm size, income, access to markets, access to climate information and extension, and livestock production. This implies the need to support the indigenous adaptation strategies of the smallholder farmers with a wide range of institutional, policy, and technology support; some of it targeted on smaller, poorer or female-headed households. Moreover, creating opportunities for non-farm income sources is important as this helps farmers to engage in those activities that are less sensitive to climate change. Furthermore, providing climate change information, extension services, and creating access to markets are crucial