Building resilience to climate change: Examining the impact of agro‐ecological zones and social groups on sustainable development

Abstract

Nepal is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, which is negatively affecting agricultural production and food security. However, the role of agro‐ecological zones and social groups in climate change adaptation (CCA) and its impact on smallholder farmers in Nepal remains unexplored. To fill this gap, this study aimed to identify the effect of agro‐ecological zones and social groups on smallholder farmers' adaptation to climate change using the multivariate probit model. Multistage sampling was used to collect data from 400 households in three agro‐ecological zones of Nepal. These zones were highland (mountainous region), midland (hilly region) and lowland (terai/plain region). The results of our study showed that farmers in the Mountain region are more likely to adopt off‐farm activities and temporary migration as a CCA strategy than those in the Terai/plain agro‐ecological zone. In the Terai/Plain, farmers mainly adopt small‐scale irrigation and agroforestry. In terms of social groups, the Brahmin group was more likely to adopt new crop varieties and small‐scale irrigation than the Sudra group. The Sudra farmers preferred temporary migration and off‐farm activities more than the Brahmins. Our study shows that policies to promote the adoption of CCA strategies need to take into account location and social group differences in order to improve the adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable farmers. Mountain and Sudra farmers need support to adapt to climate change and sustain agriculture.

Social‐ecological systems approach for adaptation to climate change

“…Much work on adaptation to climate change has been limited to determinants of adaptations (e.g., Barnes et al, 2020; Kabir et al, 2021; Kandel et al, 2023), without incorporating SES or investigating how these determinants of adaptation to climate change are changing across the temporal and spatial scales of SES. The SES determinants for climate change adaptation require longitudinal analysis in order to understand the transformative response for the social systems (Dow et al, 2013) and predict the signal for the adaptation tipping point of the SES (Lenton et al, 2008).…”