Empirical Evidence of the Livelihood Vulnerability to Climate Change Impacts: A Case of Potato-Based Mountain Farming Systems in Bhutan

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is an indispensable commodity, mainly cultivated by high-altitude mountain households, that sustains and supports the livelihood of an overwhelming 51% of the Bhutanese population. The popularity of potato cultivation among Bhutanese farmers can be attributed to the crop’s adaptability to a wide range of agroclimatic conditions such as a rainfed crop, high productivity, an assured market, and a reliable source of income for the farming families. We hypothesize that the changing climate would make the livelihood associated with potato cultivation in Bhutan more vulnerable. We tested this hypothesis to identify the sources of vulnerability of smallholder farming households using the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and LVI-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) approaches in six potato growing districts of Bhutan: Bumthang, Chukha, Gasa, Mongar, Tashigang, and Wangdue. Primary data were generated through a semi structured sample survey of 240 households on the seven major livelihood components of sociodemographic profiles, livelihood strategies, social networks, health, food, water, natural disasters, and climate variability. The results showed that the LVI (range 0.302 to 0.375) and LVI-IPCC (range −0.005 to 0.030) differed significantly (p < 0.001) across the districts. The districts of Tashigang and Mongar were less vulnerable than the other four districts by the LVI approach, whereas Bumthang was also revealed to be less vulnerable using the LVI-IPCC approach. The degree of vulnerability in a district differed according to their level of exposure and adaptive capacity to the climate change impacts of the potato farming household. The results are expected to serve as empirical evidence for designing a future course of actions to mitigate the negative impacts.

The presence of wild edible plants and determinants influencing their harvest, consumption, and conservation in south eastern Bhutan

“…Since the data generated in this study were non-parametric in nature (and not fulfilling the assumptions of an ANOVA), a Kruskal-Wallis test by ranks (equivalent to one-way ANOVA for parametric data) were used for statistical data analyses using the IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 22) predictive analytics software. This methodology is more appropriate to analyse non-parametric or ordinal data [ 79 , 80 ]. The data collected on the five attributes/ranks under the major aspects of (a) purposes of harvesting, (b) motivation for collection, (c) reasons for consumption, and (d) strategies on conservation of WEPs were assessed using a boxplot and then subjected to Kruskal-Wallis test by ranks.…”

Exploring Human–Wildlife Conflict and Implications for Food Self-Sufficiency in Bhutan

“…Bhutanese farmers generally practice subsistence agricultural farming, with small land holdings [45], through the tradition of household labor exchange [46]. In recent years, limited agricultural production has been challenged by farm labor shortages, resulting from rural to urban migration [8,47], and climate change, through changes in monsoon patterns [48,49]. In addition to these challenges, crop damage by wild animals is a major challenge to Bhutanese farmers because of the strong nature conservation policy, which prohibits hunting wild animals [50], and the acute dependence of rural households on farming [51].…”

Assessing the Vulnerability of Nomadic Pastoralists’ Livelihoods to Climate Change in the Zhetysu Region of Kazakhstan

“….some of the sub-components were measured on a different scale. It was necessary to standardize each one of them as an index developed using" [20,23,24]:…”

“…In calculations according to Equation (3), we performed a control calculation on equation 4 according to the method of Suillivan et al (2002), Rai et al (2022) [24,26]:…”