Indigenous people’s responses to drought in northwest Bangladesh

Mafongoya

Journal of Asian and African Studies

2020

Drought is a major challenge threatening agricultural productivity in uMsinga. The occurrence of drought is expected to increase in coming decades, intensifying in severity, duration and the way people are affected by drought. The objective of this study is to understand small-scale farmers’ and rural communities’ perceptions of drought, its environmental and socio-economic impacts, adaptive and mitigation measures at household level and their satisfaction with the government’s role in drought management in the community. The study utilized a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, in the form of questionnaires, focus groups and key informant interviews. The sample size for the research study was 180 respondents for the questionnaire component and a total of 30 respondents for the focus groups and key informant interviews. The results show that increased levels of poverty, food insecurity and increased migration were the main socio-economic impacts perceived by respondents. Water scarcity, crop failure, forest degradation and an increase in average temperatures were perceived by respondents as the main environmental impacts caused by drought in uMsinga. Respondents perceived drought as a serious threat to agricultural production and adopted various indigenous adaptive strategies. A majority of respondents adopted a reactive approach to drought management, and therefore did not adopt many mitigation measures.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impacts of Drought and the Adaptive Strategies of Small-Scale Farmers in uMsinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Mafongoya

Journal of Asian and African Studies

2020

“…Esta pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa (Godoy, 1995;Pereira et al, 2018), na qual os fatos integram um contexto sociocultural, compreendeu condições de vida e soluções de problemas das pessoas indígenas, usando técnicas do método Diagnóstico Rural Participativo (DRP). Por meio da aplicação de ferramentas desse método, as pessoas da comunidade investigada são encorajadas a participarem e se tornarem hegemônicas na condução do planejamento local e na tomada de decisões e medidas que melhorem as suas condições de vida (Chambers, 1997;Ahmed et al, 2019 (Silva, 2016).…”

Section: Metodologiaunclassified

“…A oficina contou com a participação de 33 pessoas, entre elas agricultores, estudantes e donas do lar e fundamentou-se em princípios e técnicas do Diagnóstico Rural Participativo (DRP) propostos por Chambers (1997) Venn e árvore de problemas (Chambers, 1997;Ahmed et al, 2019). Todos os participantes foram incentivados a refletir sobre a infraestrutura (recursos), estrutura (organização social), relações institucionais da comunidade com órgãos externos e superestrutura (cultura e valores que definem o padrão de vida local), assim como a respeito de como eles têm se organizado em seus espaços vivenciais e como têm evoluído ao longo dos últimos tempos.…”

Section: Metodologiaunclassified

“…Apesar dessa situação, poucos estudos, sobre povos indígenas, permitem as pessoas a participarem de seu próprio desenvolvimento, incorporando conhecimento e opiniões no planejamento e gerenciamento de informações sobre problemas e potencialidades da realidade social comunitária, conduzindo sua própria análise, planejamento e forma de agir, como possibilita o desenvolvimento do Diagnóstico Rural Participativo (Chambers, 1997;Ahmed et al, 2019;Aguiar et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

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Diagnóstico rural participativo para avaliar a sustentabilidade da comunidade indígena Catu, Rio Grande do Norte

Silva

Filgueira

2020

RSD

In response to the unsustainable development in indigenous communities, which does not improve their living conditions and threatens their native culture, the aim of the present study is to analyze local development and the living conditions of the Catu indigenous community, located between Goianinha and Canguaretama, in Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil. To that end, the knowledge of the indigenous people regarding the problems and solutions related to sustainability was relied upon. This qualitative research investigated the living conditions of the native people and the solutions to the problems they proposed using the tools of the Participatory Rural Appraisal method. The results of the study in Catu showed that the participants of the appraisal were fully aware of the community’s potentials and problems. Despite the potentials described by the indigenous people, there are problems such as low education level; absence of land demarcation, technical assistance and help from the producer cooperative; inadequate disposal of solid wastes; poor access roads and most importantly, the socioenvironmental pressure caused by the commercial planting of sugarcane and current urbanization, both of which threaten sustainability. With a view to introducing more sustainable strategies, a community action plan against exogenous actions was formulated. Given the indigenous customs, these actions are unsustainable because they endanger the lives and traditions of the community, in addition to their right to a long and prosperous life in their own land.

“…) and play out on multiple temporal and spatial scales (White 2011, Methmann 2014, Boas 2015, Baldwin 2016, Fröhlich 2016, Hardy, Milligan and Heynen 2017, Rothe 2017, Gioli and Milan 2018, Telford 2018). Case studies furthermore reveal how simplistic narratives about climate refugee/migrants not only blanket over such differences, but also erode the agency of those involved and overlook the ways in which mobilities are part of coping and adaptation strategies (McNamara and Gibson 2009, Barnett and Campbell 2010, Gray 2011, Farbotko and Lazrus 2012, Smith and McNamara 2014, Adams 2016, Ahmed et al 2019.…”

Section: ***mentioning

confidence: 99%

And yet it moves! (Climate) migration as a symptom in the Anthropocene

Bettini

2019

Mobilities

While the climate-migration nexus raises crucial questions of mobility and climate justice, it is commonly understood through simplistic narratives that reify a complex set of relations. The spectre of environmentally-induced exodus is recurrent in media, policy and activist circles, in spite of numerous studies that reveal the empirical flaws and noxious normative implications of such narratives. This article explores this insistence, and the desire(s) for there to be a reified relation between climate and migration it reveals. The article proceeds in three movements. First, it situates discourses on climate migration in relation to the crisis of humanism the Anthropocene signifies. Second, it operates a symptomatic reading of climate migration discourses, drawing on two understandings of symptom elaborated by Lacan-as 'return of the repressed' and as 'Sinthome'. Read as a symptom, the figure of the climate migrant/refugee appears as the return of fundamental contradictions that carve contemporary regimes of socioecological (re)production. Through the concept of 'Sinthome', discourses on climate migration can be read as (illusory) attempts to shore up for the waning consistence of modern forms of 'being human'. Finally, the article proposes a symptomatic reading of the Anthropocene itself, and elaborates on what the dissolution of this symptom/ Sinthome would entail.