Climate change adaptation, institutions and livelihood dynamics of rural households

A great of deal of attention has been given to understand the potential impacts of climate change, vulnerabilities, adaptation and their socio-economic factors. Despite the surge in literature, there remains notable gaps on non-farm livelihood adaptation and institutions. This dissertation contributes to these gaps by making livelihood as the center of analysis. It has three interrelated objectives: (i) examines the dynamics of non-farm livelihood of rural households; (ii) livelihood adaptation strategies of households and factors determining households’ choice the strategies; (iii) investigate how institutions and institutional arrangements process livelihood adaptation strategies at the local level. The results showed that rural households non-farm livelihoods have exhibited an overall increasing pattern over the study years but with fluctuation from one round to the next. The fluctuation is in line with the rainfall amount and distribution during the main growing season. Second, it is also found that rural households’ adaptation strategies range from farm-level to non-farm adaptation strategies. The strategies are mainly affected by households’ perception of rainfall, socio-economic characteristics and institutions. Institutions such as transaction, governance structure, institutional design process and institutionalization of rules are found to be critical components of the institutions that has affected local adaptation strategies. Finally, policies regard to non-farm livelihood adaptation strategies need to increase household’s access to financial schemes, market access, and increase skills and technical capacity of households through vocational training. In addition, policies need to design specific institutions and institutional arrangements for each adaptation strategies with active community participation.