Promoting and Enhancing Sustainable Livelihood Options as an Adaptive Strategy to Reduce Vulnerability and Increase Resilience to Climate Change Impact in the Central Himalaya

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In the rural landscape of the central Himalaya, livelihoods of the people depend heavily on agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry sectors and they are inextricably connected with each other. The role of forest goods and services in sustaining the productivity of the agriculture and animal husbandry is immense. The central Himalayan region has a number of characteristics that increase the region’s vulnerability to climate change impacts. Higher population and poverty, coupled with low resilience to climate risks, make the region highly vulnerable to climate change. Livelihoods of majority of the poor/marginal and traditional societies are heavily dependent on natural resources particularly in the hilly region. Changes in the availability of the resources, accentuated by climate risks, are expected to have far-reaching implications. These risks could undermine the gains made in poverty reduction and livelihoods and impede progress towards meeting the desired national development goals. International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that we are now locked into inevitable changes in climate system. Changes on climate such as mean temperature, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as well as changes in precipitation pattern, sea level rise and glaciers retreat have been projected. Although there is a lack of certainty in predicting and quantifying climate change impacts on socio-economic systems, it is well known that climate change impacts threaten a major dimension of human well being, namely food security. These climate change related risks threaten approximately 70 % of the rural people largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture in the central Himalaya. For the rural poor, human security is synonymous with food security. Extreme droughts or untimely heavy rains have often led not only to loss of life, but also an exacerbation of poverty conditions through the degradation of the natural resource base, leading to increase in poverty particularly in low income groups. Hence, low income group or poor people are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.