RESUMO
Rural and agricultural communities' adaptation to climate change has gained significant attention owing to many countries' vulnerability to climate change risks. A similar trend has been witnessed in South Asia, a highly climate-vulnerable region, where research has grown dramatically considering the agriculture sector's vulnerability to climate-induced disasters. However, little attention has been paid to the adaptation of the livelihoods of rural households. This research, therefore, takes the case of Pakistan to explore livelihood adaptation strategies of rural households to climate change and investigate the factors that expedite or halt the adoption of livelihood diversification strategies. A multistage sampling design is used in this research, where 480 rural households from the Punjab province of Pakistan were selected and interviewed using stratified and random sampling approaches. A multivariate probit (MVP) regression model is employed to analyze the factors affecting households' adoption of livelihood adaptation strategies. The results show that besides adaptation of agronomic operations (agricultural adaptation strategies), rural households in the study area employed a wide range of strategies to adapt their livelihoods to climate change. These strategies include poultry and livestock farming, value addition of farm produce, trading of animals and farm commodities, small businesses (shops, etc.), daily wage labor, horticultural crop farming, and non-farming jobs. The estimates of the MVP model revealed that respondents' education, household size, income, access to a credit facility, access to farm advisory services, and access to climate forecasts have significantly influenced the choice of livelihood adaptation strategies. Based on these findings, this research recommends that the authorities should make efforts to improve farmers' understanding of the adaptation of climate change risks and educate them to adopt multiple livelihood options to improve the resilience of their livelihoods to climate-induced risks. This research has important policy implications for other countries with similar socio-economic features.
RESUMO
The development of agriculture sector and livelihood in Bangladesh are threatened by various climatic stressors, including flash flooding. Therefore, Extension and advisory services (EAS) need to navigate the knowledge landscape effectively to connect various farm actors and help secure the optimum benefits of knowledge and information for making rational decisions. However, little is known how EAS can perform this task to combat various effects of climate change. This study investigates the means of brokering knowledge by the EAS to help the farming sector adapt to flash flooding. The research was conducted in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh with 73 staff of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the largest public EAS in Bangladesh. The results showed that DAE primarily dealt with crop production-related information. However, EAS did not navigate knowledge and information about flash flooding, such as weather forecasting and crop-saving-embankments updates, among the farming actors. Moreover, they missed the broad utilization of internet-based-communication channels to rapidly navigate information and knowledge about possible flash flooding and its adaptation strategies. This article provides some policy implications to effectively support the adaptation of farming system to flash flooding through EAS.
