Household Vulnerability to Flood Disasters among Tharu Community, Western Nepal

Monsoon floods are frequent in the Tarai region of Nepal and claim thousands of lives and substantial numbers of properties every year. Certain human activities are more affected than others in the case of the same hazard. This study analyzes vulnerability to flooding among Tharu households. Data were collected by employing household surveys, group discussions, and key informant interviews in the Thapapur Village Development Committee (VDC) of Kailali district, western Tarai, Nepal. The analysis presented in this study is based on the theory that underpins the pressure and release (PAR) and access models. The results show that Tharu people are the major inhabitants in the study area and they prefer to live within their community; many ex-bonded laborers (marginalized people) choose this location for residence. Human causalities have been reduced in recent years due to easy access to cell phones, which has facilitated effective flood warnings with suitable lead times, but agriculture production loss and other losses are still high. Agricultural land is not only an important natural asset but is also considered a financial asset due to its high price and private ownership. The study concludes that subsistence agriculture-based households with small landholding sizes and less income diversification are highly vulnerable to flooding. Improper resettlement of ex-bonded laborers and land fragmentation due to separation of family members are the most prominent factors resulting in small landholdings. The results can guide government authorities to develop proper flood management strategies for the people living in the lowlands (particularly the Tarai region) of Nepal.publishedVersio

Seasonal Migration and Livelihood Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in Nepal

Migration for work remains a livelihood strategy in subsistence farming communities globally, especially in view of unprecedented environmental change. Farmers in the high Himalaya migrate during the winter, when farming activities are reduced. This study examined the drivers of seasonal migration in the context of climate change and migration's role in food security and livelihood resilience in the district of Humla, Nepal. Focus group discussions and a household socioeconomic survey were conducted. The results suggest that rather than climate change impacts, structural poverty is the root cause of migration, such that men from poor households with small landholdings and high food insecurity, mainly belonging to low-caste groups, migrate for work during the winter. Focus group participants also presented a clear perception of climate variability and change and their negative impacts on crop production. In this context, the poorest households find cultivating their own land risky. Moreover, the traditional practice of sharecropping, which helped them reduce food shortages, has also become less profitable. Therefore, more households are likely to participate in seasonal migration in the context of climate change, and those already migrating are likely to do so for longer time periods. Currently, such migrants take up low-paying unskilled wage work, mainly in towns and cities in Uttarakhand, India, which enable them to make only modest savings, hardly enough to repay the debt their family has incurred during food shortages. Even in the future, these farmers are likely to be limited to the same migration pattern, because they lack the social ties, education, and financial capital needed to fulfill the administrative and monetary requirements for more economically promising long-term overseas migration. Thus, it is unlikely that migration will make a significant contribution to building livelihood resilience in the context of climate change in remote Himalayan farming communities

Seasonal Migration and Livelihood Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in Nepal

Migration for work remains a livelihood strategy in subsistence farming communities globally, especially in view of unprecedented environmental change. Farmers in the high Himalaya migrate during the winter, when farming activities are reduced. This study examined the drivers of seasonal migration in the context of climate change and migration's role in food security and livelihood resilience in the district of Humla, Nepal. Focus group discussions and a household socioeconomic survey were conducted. The results suggest that rather than climate change impacts, structural poverty is the root cause of migration, such that men from poor households with small landholdings and high food insecurity, mainly belonging to low-caste groups, migrate for work during the winter. Focus group participants also presented a clear perception of climate variability and change and their negative impacts on crop production. In this context, the poorest households find cultivating their own land risky. Moreover, the traditional practice of sharecropping, which helped them reduce food shortages, has also become less profitable. Therefore, more households are likely to participate in seasonal migration in the context of climate change, and those already migrating are likely to do so for longer time periods. Currently, such migrants take up low-paying unskilled wage work, mainly in towns and cities in Uttarakhand, India, which enable them to make only modest savings, hardly enough to repay the debt their family has incurred during food shortages. Even in the future, these farmers are likely to be limited to the same migration pattern, because they lack the social ties, education, and financial capital needed to fulfill the administrative and monetary requirements for more economically promising long-term overseas migration. Thus, it is unlikely that migration will make a significant contribution to building livelihood resilience in the context of climate change in remote Himalayan farming communities

Food System Dynamics and Food Insecurity in Humla, Nepal Himalaya

This study examines the challenges underlying food security of the Himalayan smallholder farmers focusing on three interrelated dimensions: the impact of multiple environmental and socio-economic stressors on food system, access to and role of nonfarm income sources, and the role of humanitarian and development interventions on food security and livelihoods. The results suggested that the food systems are driven by synergistic impacts of climate change and changes in forest governance through community forestry (CF) program. The CF regulated the use of forest directly affecting the livestock population. Since livestock is the sole source of soil fertility and the backbone of the traditional salt-grain trade, its population decrease has had direct impact on food production and household income. In addition, decreasing winter precipitation and increasing dry spell synergized the impacts of the CF resulting in negative food production. Adoption of off-farm income activities and utilization of food support from food assistance programs (FAPs) were the main factors that cushioned the farmers’ food deprivation to some extent. A locally disaggregated analysis revealed that there were high caste/ethnic disparities in food insecurity prevalence as well as the capacity to excel strategies to reduce it. Having too little productive land the low caste Dalits were the most food insecure group of all. Due to their little human, financial and social capital, they also failed to diversify livelihoods into high return sectors to reduce food insecurity as did their high caste counterparts. Moreover, food assistance programs being highly influenced by local politics and power failed to benefit this most food insecure group while the high caste households and those powerful in local politics reaped disproportionately higher amount of food aid. In this context, the Dalits ended up with low return activities, such as providing wage labor to the farms of high castes or serving them with their caste based skills such as smithing or tailoring in a patron-client exchange system. Since the exchange system is controlled by high caste clients, Dalits are kept in dependency, which gets intensified when environmental and socio-economic changes stress their livelihoods. Arguably, caste relation discriminated against some group and resulted into the evolution and persistence of their marginalization and food insecurity and therefore food insecurity is inherently a political problem. The insights provided by this study do not downplay the significance of critical challenges such as climate change impacts on food systems and therefore the need of agricultural production approach to enhance food system resilience. However, the focus only on technical interventions to increase production and the capacity of the production systems to adapt to change do not alter the social and political drivers that make some groups vulnerable to food insecurity. Since local social, political and economic inequities are the primary factors underlying the vulnerability of some groups, social equity should be one of the primary goals of targeted interventions so that they can ensure their ability to enhance food security through farming or through the access to profitable non-farm activities as well as from accessing humanitarian support. Conceptually, this insight corresponds to a recent call made by social scientists to invigorate social-ecological system (SES) approach by giving a stronger emphasis on social factors of system vulnerability, which the conventional SES studies largely lack

Rural livelihood diversification and household well-being: Insights from Humla, Nepal

AbstractDiversification of livelihoods is a commonly applied strategy for coping with economic and environmental shocks and instrumental in poverty reduction. In this paper, we have assessed the role of livelihood diversification in household well-being in Humla, a remote mountain district in west Nepal. Employing the data produced from household surveys, we developed a composite household well-being index incorporating four components and 15 indicators, and measured the effect of diversification on it. Results suggested a uniform pattern of diversification in terms of the number of activities undertaken for livelihoods but a highly varying degree of resultant well-being across households. Analysis showed that well-being was not associated with diversification per se but rather on a households' involvement in ‘high return sectors’ such as trade or salaried job. Because involvement in these remunerative sectors is determined by various financial, social and human capitals, poor households were unable to combat the entry barrier and were prevented from getting access to them. In this way, livelihood diversification was found to have a highly skewed effect leading to inequality of income and well-being. This, in turn, is likely to risk depriving the poor households from exploiting new economic opportunities even in the future

Household Vulnerability to Flood Disasters among Tharu Community, Western Nepal

Monsoon floods are frequent in the Tarai region of Nepal and claim thousands of lives and substantial numbers of properties every year. Certain human activities are more affected than others in the case of the same hazard. This study analyzes vulnerability to flooding among Tharu households. Data were collected by employing household surveys, group discussions, and key informant interviews in the Thapapur Village Development Committee (VDC) of Kailali district, western Tarai, Nepal. The analysis presented in this study is based on the theory that underpins the pressure and release (PAR) and access models. The results show that Tharu people are the major inhabitants in the study area and they prefer to live within their community; many ex-bonded laborers (marginalized people) choose this location for residence. Human causalities have been reduced in recent years due to easy access to cell phones, which has facilitated effective flood warnings with suitable lead times, but agriculture production loss and other losses are still high. Agricultural land is not only an important natural asset but is also considered a financial asset due to its high price and private ownership. The study concludes that subsistence agriculture-based households with small landholding sizes and less income diversification are highly vulnerable to flooding. Improper resettlement of ex-bonded laborers and land fragmentation due to separation of family members are the most prominent factors resulting in small landholdings. The results can guide government authorities to develop proper flood management strategies for the people living in the lowlands (particularly the Tarai region) of Nepal