Responses to Weather and Climate

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 household
coping strategies.