adaptation strategies
Climate change is fast pushing communities, particularly the poorest and most marginalised, beyond their capacity to respond. Across the world, subsistence crops are approaching the limits of their viability as temperatures change; erratic rainfall patterns and changing seasons are upsetting agricultural cycles and leaving many struggling to feed their families; and rising sea levels are...
The climate has always presented a challenge to those whose livelihoods depend on it. For poor people, a variable climate presents a risk that can critically restrict options and so limit development. This document looks at the risk assessment tools such as index insurance that can be used to help vulnerable people deal with climate change.
Index insurance, which can be applied...
This research paper demonstrate the stories of struggles of poor women from Bangladesh, India and Nepal to protect their life, home, assets and livelihoods from water induced hazards. It provides the evidence that women living in flood areas have started to adapt to a changing climate even with limited resources, information and support. Women’s priorities include a safe place to live...
With its close connections to the environment and climate itself, tourism is considered to be a vulnerable and highly climate-sensitive economic sector, similar to agriculture, insurance, energy, and transportation. At the same time, tourism is a contributor to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, including emissions from transport, accommodation and activities. In 2005, tourism's contribution to...
This publication demonstrates the link between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, while contributing to the ongoing global effort to promote gender equality in socio-economic development.
The present publication seeks to highlight initiatives that have successfully used disaster risk reduction as a tool to adapt to climate change and reduce risk and...
This paper deals with the strategies adopted by the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HK-H) mountain communities in response to adverse natural and human induced circumstances. The quality of life and growth options in mountains (including hills) are deeply rooted in mountain specificities (e.g., fragility, marginality, diversity). Hence, the disregard of these mountain specificities while using mountain...
For many centuries, (semi-)nomadic pastoralists used pasture areas in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains. Under Soviet rule, sedentarization began in the 1930s and collective farms replaced socioeconomic units based on kinship. Soviet land use was monofunctional and dependent on high levels of inputs such as chemical fertilisers, machinery, concentrated feed, and subsidies and was neither...
Bhutan, a mountainous country where 79% of the population depends on agriculture, has a relatively short history of government intervention in the agricultural sector. The first research and extension activities began only 4 decades ago. Developments over this period are generally seen as positive, although it is impossible to separate the influence of social change and the road network from...
Characterising and understanding social-ecological systems (SESs) is increasingly necessary to answer questions about the development of sustainable human settlements. To date, much of the literature on SES analysis has focused on “neat” systems involving a single type of resource, a group of users, and a governance system. While these studies provide valuable and specific insights...
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) in the October edition focuses on an IHDP review on mountain regions around the world, in particular, looking at adaption to climate change in difficult environments.
Summaries of scientific work describe findings in mountainous areas in Africa, Eurasia and the Americas. The projects reveal the prime...
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