Household-level vulnerability to drought in hill agriculture of Nepal: implications for adaptation planning

Abstract

Climate change-related drought in recent years has emerged as a source of household-level vulnerability in rainfed hill agriculture of Nepal. The farmers cannot grow crops when there is no rainfall during the cropping season. They have weak adaptive capacity against drought due to the poor asset base and low access to services and facilities. The government also has limited resources to support these farmers, which calls for prioritising both the adaptation indicators and beneficiary farmers. However, current literature on vulnerability is inadequate, and there is still uncertainty in measurement at household level. Amidst this uncertainty, this research uses an objective method of vulnerability analysis, applying multivariate independence techniques. Information collected by participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and household survey of 158 farms from August 2008 to January 2009 was used. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to prioritise the indicators, and cluster analysis (CA) was used to classify farmers into different vulnerability groups. The indicators, arranged from highest to lowest priority, were access to land, access to irrigation, employment diversification, access to markets, crop–livestock integration, access to social networks and access to agricultural training. Similarly, 63%, 18% and 19% of all farms were classified as highly vulnerable, moderately vulnerable and less vulnerable, respectively. The article then discusses constraints and relevant areas of adaptation interventions for each vulnerability group of farmers.

Keywords:

• climate change
• uncertain rainfall
• rainfed agriculture
• household-level vulnerability
• adaptation

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Norwegian fellowship programme (NORAD) through the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. The contribution of the French Research & Cooperation Organization on Agriculture, Rural Development & Natural Resource Management (CIRAD) is also highly acknowledged for funding the fieldwork. We are also grateful to Mr Asif Kamran, a doctoral student in the Asian Institute of Technology, for providing comments on the draft manuscript.