Choquette-Levy Nicolas, Ghimire Dirgha, Oppenheimer Michael, Ghimire Rajendra, Ck Dil
Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA.
Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA.
Popul Environ. 2025;47(2):22. doi: 10.1007/s11111-025-00493-8. Epub 2025 May 20.
Increasing climate risks introduce new sources of uncertainty to smallholder farmers' livelihood decisions. While farmers in different development contexts tend to accurately perceive long-term climatic trends, livelihood diversification as a climate resilience strategy has generally lagged behind awareness of climate risks. In this study, we investigate potential mechanisms behind this lagged response through a survey of 500 farming households in Nepal's Chitwan Valley, a region that is highly dependent on subsistence agriculture and highly exposed to several climate-driven hazards. Specifically, we employ a suite of cross-sectional and time series econometric techniques to analyze how farmers' information sources, social capital, and previous exposure to climate hazards shape climate risk perceptions and livelihood decisions. We find that climate-driven risks are highly salient to household perceptions of farming risks; however, they also drive higher perceived risks of common livelihood diversification strategies, including rural-urban migration and off-farm employment. Further, while farming households generally maintain diversified income portfolios, exposure to droughts and/or floods leads to persistent increases in the reliance on farming income, which we term a "retrenchment" response. We find evidence for both financial and psychological mechanisms behind this response, which may exacerbate environmentally driven poverty traps. Our results indicate that efforts to build farmers' resilience to climate risks should especially account for perceived risks of livelihood alternatives, financial constraints, and loss-averse behavior in response to income shocks.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11111-025-00493-8.
日益增加的气候风险给小农的生计决策带来了新的不确定性来源。虽然处于不同发展背景下的农民往往能够准确感知长期气候趋势，但作为一种气候适应策略的生计多样化总体上滞后于对气候风险的认知。在本研究中，我们通过对尼泊尔奇旺山谷的500户农户进行调查，探究这种滞后反应背后的潜在机制。该地区高度依赖自给农业，且极易遭受多种气候驱动的灾害。具体而言，我们运用一系列横截面和时间序列计量技术，来分析农民的信息来源、社会资本以及先前遭受气候灾害的经历如何塑造气候风险认知和生计决策。我们发现，气候驱动的风险在农户对农业风险的认知中非常突出；然而，它们也导致了对包括农村向城市迁移和非农就业在内的常见生计多样化策略的更高感知风险。此外，虽然农户通常维持多样化的收入组合，但遭受干旱和/或洪水会导致对农业收入的依赖持续增加，我们将这种情况称为“收缩”反应。我们发现了这种反应背后的金融和心理机制的证据，这可能会加剧环境驱动的贫困陷阱。我们的结果表明，增强农民应对气候风险能力的努力应特别考虑到对生计替代方案的感知风险、金融约束以及面对收入冲击时的损失厌恶行为。
网络版包含可在10.1007/s11111-025-00493-8获取的补充材料。
