Echoes of Survival: Climate Change Impact & Typologies of Adaptation among Vulnerable Communities toward Climate-Induced Food Insecurity in Pakistan

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Climate change exacerbates severe and differential impacts across diverse classes and genders, influencing their livelihoods, food insecurity vulnerabilities, and adaptation measures. Through an intersectional and social justice approach integrated with grounded theory, we documented field observation with individual narratives and amplified voices from a wide range of individuals, including internally displaced people, women, smallholders, landless tenants, daily wage laborers and community leaders in fragile districts of Bannu and D I Khan in Pakistan. We found a growing impact of climate on these households' food security including socio-psychological stress and stigmas. In addition to formulating an interpretive framework, our results highlight the significant role of socio-religious, cultural, gendered, behavioral, environmental, and institutional factors in shaping individuals' climate-induced food security vulnerabilities, and their ability to adapt to climate extremes. These individuals employed several mitigation strategies to cope with food insecurity, including diversification of non-farming livelihoods, increased reliance on social and communal networks and informal credit markets. The study emphasizes on considering the interplay between socio-economic classes, religion, social networks, and gender dynamics in relation to adaptive strategies to foster sustainable food systems and further suggests that existing policies and adaptation programs should benefit from incorporating community and individual narratives to tackle climate extremes.