Examples of adapting existing livelihoods to be more climate-responsive
Climate change is making it harder for people to make a living from the land and the sea. But there are things you can do to make your livelihood more climate-friendly. Here are some examples:
- Change your production methods. Use climate-smart production practices to adapt to the impacts of climate change and reduce vulnerability to climate hazards — for example, post-harvest processing to increase the shelf life of food.
- Diversify your produce and markets. Produce a variety of crops with different climate tolerances — for example, plant more drought-resistant crops — and sell produce to different markets.
- Access financial resources. Credit and insurance can help you cope with the financial impacts of climate change — for example, use micro-credit to invest in renewable energy to reduce long-term expenditures.
- Develop sustainable resource management practices — for example, find ways to earn money from the forest, like selling non-timber and renewable forest produce.
Case study
Pear cactus grows in abundance in most of the semi-arid and arid regions in Western India, particularly Gujarat and Rajasthan. The Centre for Environment Education (CEE) helped improve the livelihoods of women through a programme called Gram Nidhi which uses an eco-entrepreneurship model. One of the places in which the programme was run was Jasdan, Gujarat, which is a semi-arid and extremely hot place. A large part of Jasdan is wasteland. It is rocky and has no water resources. The local women struggle to find a feasible livelihood as both agriculture and animal husbandry are practically impossible.
With support from the CEE, the women in Jasdan learned how to extract pear cactus fruit juices by converting an existing, locally made wooden device for making buttermilk. They also received support to form savings, micro-credit and self-help groups.
Today, many businesses in Gujarat employ women to collect and process pear cactus fruits.
Photographs: Centre for Environment Education/Commonwealth of Learning and Kuntal De (2010).
Reading
Climate Change Adaptation. (n.d.). Livelihoods. Human stories. United Nations Development Programme. https://www.adaptation-undp.org/livelihoods.
Licence: Open source/Public domain