Mapping of household vulnerability and identification of adaptation strategies in dryland systems of South Asia

Abstract

Low amount and high variability of rainfall in South Asian dryland production system have affected the livelihood of small and marginal households. Therefore, a marginal change in the climate could challenge the livelihood resilience of millions of farmers and affect the healthy ecosystem function in South Asia. The CGIAR Consortium Research Program on Dryland Systems (DS) focuses on DS across the world in order to tackle these problems. The overall emphasis of the research involves understanding the problem, identifying and demonstrating technologies and searching for mechanisms to promote the adoption of promising technologies. In South Asia, the program selected six districts in Andhra Pradesh (Anantapur and Kurnool), Karnataka (Bijapur) and Western Rajasthan (Jaisalmer, Barmer, and Jodhpur) as action sites. The overall objectives of the present study are to map the vulnerability at household level and examine the level of coping strategies adopted by them and to investigate the impact of different adaptation strategies in reducing the level of vulnerability in the South Asian DS action sites. The study covers all the six districts as mentioned earlier, and the data was collected from farmers in 15 villages located in the action districts. A total of 1019 farmers were randomly selected, and the survey was executed during 2012-13 and the data collected was related to the production year of 2011-12.