Sustainable livelihood approach and climate change adaptation understanding processes and multi stakeholders perceptions

Abstract

In recent years there is a growing realization that in spite of all ongoing mitigation efforts, climate change adaptation (CCA) is a must. Many of the climate change impacts have already started impacting vulnerable sections and regions. Rural communities, their lives and livelihoods such as rain-fed farming are most impacted, due to high level of natural resource and climate dependency of their livelihoods. There is increasing consensus that many of the development options provide CCA benefits. Therefore various community based, people centric approaches to adaptation are being increasingly tried out. Sustainable livelihood approach (SLA) offers one such approach to CCA. But there is still need for empirical studies to understand link between the two using a systematic framework. The current research is an effort to understand how SLA influences the climate change adaptation process, especially with reference to rural livelihoods. Adopting a mixed method research design, the current thesis studies sustainable livelihood interventions being made by Centre for Environment Education, in Rajkot District. For the purpose, a theoretical framework that can act as a climate change adaptation lens to be applied to a sustainable livelihood project, has been developed. The framework defines seven broad categories of factors, that can act as determinant of adaptive capacity. This framework is then further applied to the identified case, to study influence of SL intervention on CCA through analysing how each of this determinant is being influenced through SL intervention. The research also analyses perception of multi-stakeholders to understand their perceptions regarding how the process is influencing their capacity to adapt. Through this systematic approach the study concludes that SLA has strong CCA potential. Further it identifies micro and macro level factors that act as key enablers that facilitate the process of adaptive capacity enhancement and translating the same in climate adaptive action.