Rethinking Food Aid in a Chronically Food-Insecure Region: Effects of Food Aid on Local Power Relations and Vulnerability Patterns in Northwestern Nepal

The impacts of repeated food aid programmes on households’ livelihood strategies and capacity to adapt to stressors such as climate change were investigated in the chronically food-insecure district of Humla in Nepal, using food security as an entry point for analysing vulnerability. The study questions food aid as a tool to reduce vulnerability, and argues that it may indirectly impede the enhancement of food security by reinforcing inequalities and local power structures that drive household vulnerability. The article concludes that a refocus addressing the social dynamics that shape local vulnerability patterns is needed before food aid can contribute to enhancing households’ long-term adaptive capacity

What Does Climate Change Adaptation Mean for Humanitarian Assistance? Guiding Principles for Policymakers and Practitioners

Vulnerability to climate change is the result of complex interactions of various social, political, economic and environmental conditions. Humanitarian actions, while often having short-term and ‘neutral’ intentions, necessarily influence the development pathways that define people’s vulnerability to climate change. On the one hand, humanitarian interventions risk reinforcing existing vulnerability patterns by increasing the gap between those who benefit from different programmes and those that remain marginalised. On the other, addressing climate change may provide new opportunities for transforming the development pathways that create vulnerability in the first place. However, while there are shifts at the policy level towards integrating humanitarian assistance with longer‑term development, considerations about how humanitarian action may support transformational adaptation are often missing. This article describes a framework for integrating climate change adaptation concerns into humanitarian policies and actions, which has been developed in collaboration with several humanitarian organisations to support efforts to reduce longer‑term vulnerability and the recurrence of humanitarian crises

Reproduksjon av sårbarhet gjennom klimatilpasning? : policy-prosesser, lokale maktrelasjoner og matusikkerhet i det nordvestlige Nepal

This dissertation examines the role of politics in driving vulnerability in rural households in western Nepal. More specifically, based on empirical data collected through extensive fieldwork in four villages in the district of Humla and in Kathmandu, it investigates how power relations influence differential vulnerability patterns at the local level and how Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) policies are influenced by and influence on key drivers of vulnerability.Denne avhandlingen undersøker hvordan politikk påvirker sårbarhet på landsbygda i det vestlige Nepal. Mer presist baserer studien seg på empiriske data fra feltarbeid i fire landsbyer i Humla og i Kathmandu, og den tar den for seg hvordan maktrelasjoner påvirker lokale sårbarhetsmønstre og hvordan klimatilpasningspolicyer blir påvirket av og påvirker de underliggende årsakene til sårbarhet.Flere av artiklene var ikke publisert i juli 201

Humanitarian policy and practice in a changing climate : guiding principles for practitioners

This report is an outcome of the international research project ”Courting Catastrophe? Humanitarian Policy and Practice in a Changing Climate” (2012-2016), funded by the Research Council of Norway under the NORGLOBAL1 – HUMPOL (Research on Humanitarian Policy) programme. The project was led by the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences