How much do poor rural households rely on environmental extraction from natural ecosystems? And how does climate variability impact their livelihoods? This paper sheds light on these two questions with household income data from the Poverty and Environment Network pantropical data set, combined with climate data for the
past three decades. The study finds that extraction of wild resources (from natural forests, bushlands, fallows, etc.) provides on average as much income (about 27 percent) as crops across the smallholder sample. The cross-section data on past reactions to household self-perceived economic shocks and observed production reactions to climate anomalies can, respectively, provide hints about livelihood vulnerability to current climate variability, which is likely to worsen with climate change. Forest extraction did not figure among the most favored response strategies to households’ self-perceived economic shocks, but households undertake subtle substitutions in sector production in response to weather anomalies that accentuate suboptimal climatic conditions for cropping. By relying more on forest extraction and wages, households compensate quite successfully for declining crop incomes. This paints a cautiously optimistic picture about fairly flexible rural livelihood reactions to current climate variability, and featuring forests as potentially important in householdcoping strategies.
This paper aims to develop a vision statement for the agricultural sector that may then guide the future investments in Chile's agricultural innovation system, A joint and shared perspective on how the sector might look and what role agricultural innovation...
Although much has been written about climate change and poverty as distinct and complex problems, the link between them has received little attention. Understanding this link is vital for the formulation of effective policy responses to climate change. This paper...
The Development Marketplace 2009 focused on adaptation to climate change. This paper identifies lessons from the Marketplace and assesses their implications for adaptation support. The findings are based on: statistical tabulation of all proposals; in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of...
The purpose of this paper is to provide forward-looking recommendations for linking agriculture and nutrition by looking back over the 40 years since both nutrition and rural development began at the Bank in 1973. This paper sets out to explore...
The objective of this report is to assess the usefulness of providing guidance for scaling up good practices in core ARD business lines, and to test the prospects for doing so. The output of the document is a guide for...