The adverse effects of climate change impacts on rural people's livelihood

Statement of the Problem: The paper attempts to bring rural peoples lived experience on climate change and their meaning-making process on it. Principally, it explores the contextual determinants and dimensions of rural peopleâ??s understanding of and response to climate change. This paper reviews effects, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in Nepal, with the intention of providing a broad overview of the key issues related to climate change facing by rural people in particular country. The paper further reveals that amongst climate change impact, agriculture is one of the sectors most vulnerable. The impact is even stronger to those people who totally rely on agriculture for the daily subsistence and where adaptive capacity is low. Migration has emerged as cross-cutting issues of climate change as they were compelled to diversify their livelihood due to the low production from their agricultural land. The result of several papers shows that the existing local and institutional strategies are not sufficient and sustainable to cope with climatic vagaries. Therefore, it is crucial to increase the understanding of the actual climate change dynamics on the societies at the lower levels. Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: We applied qualitative approaches in order to give an insight into how people construct discourses of understanding on climate change and their action against it. The study uses the semi-structured interview as a tool to garner data from the local level. Findings: Most of the rural people were unable to comprehend the direct meaning of climate change. However, they were experiencing on going changes in the climatic pattern. Conclusion & Significance: The impact of climate change was felt in agriculture, livestock rearing, water resources, etc. Amongst the climate change impact, the agriculture sector was hardest hit. Recommendations: As rural people are heavily dependent on agriculture, the government should effort to stimulate the structural transformation of the agriculture sector from subsistence to commercial farming. In doing so, emphasis should be given to organic farming so that there will be a win-win situation for both the agriculturalist and the environment.

Author(s): Dipti Basnet

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