Livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change: A comparative analysis based on irrigation access in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

doi:10.1016/j.regsus.2022.10.002

Abstract

Abstract:

Bulukumba Regency is one of the major rice-producing areas in South Sulawesi, Indonesia and has experienced frequent climate disasters over the past decade. Several downstream villages within the Bettu River irrigation area have been affected by the drought, culminating in reduced lowland rice production and increasing the vulnerability of farmers’ livelihoods. This study aims to evaluate the vulnerability of the livelihood system among rice farmers in the Bettu River irrigation area by classifying the area into two zones based on the distance from the main irrigation canal, namely the upstream area and downstream area. The livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) framework and livelihood vulnerability index-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC) approach were applied by selecting geographic and socio-demographic indicators that affected the farmer households, including 8 major components and 26 sup-components. The data for LVI-IPCC estimation were collected by randomly selecting 132 households from villages in the two areas. The empirical results showed that farmers in the downstream area were more vulnerable to climate change than farmers in the upstream area. The major components causing the livelihood vulnerability of the downstream farmers were livelihood strategy, food, water, land, health, as well as natural disasters and climate variability. In particular, the sub-components of agricultural livelihood diversification, consistent water supply for farming, and drought events were important in the downstream area. Farmers in the upstream area were vulnerable to socio-demographic profile and social network components. The LVI-IPCC findings suggested that the government should prioritize farmers in the downstream area to develop resilience strategies, particularly by increasing irrigation infrastructure and the number of reservoirs and drilling holes. Furthermore, to increase their adaptive capacity in terms of diversification of agricultural livelihood systems, the government and donor agencies need to provide trainings on the development of home food industries for poor farmers and vulnerable households that were affected by disasters.

Key words: Livelihood vulnerability index (LVI), Livelihood vulnerability index-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC), Climate change, Irrigation area, Lowland rice, Farmer, Indonesia

ARIFAH, Darmawan SALMAN, Amir YASSI, Eymal Bahsar DEMMALLINO. Livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change: A comparative analysis based on irrigation access in South Sulawesi, Indonesia[J]. Regional Sustainability, 2022, 3(3): 244-253.

Figures/Tables 7

Fig. 1.

Table 1

Major components of the livelihood vulnerability index-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (LVI-IPCC) framework in this study."

Contributing factor	Major component	Definition	Reference
Adaptive capacity	Livelihood strategy	Farmers’ strategies for dealing with the impact of climate change, such as diversifying agricultural livelihood systems or working in different communities	Ellis (1998); Liu et al. (2018)
	Socio-demographic profile	Farmer characteristics that influence knowledge and response to climate change impacts, including age, gender, educational background, farming experience, etc.	Hahn et al. (2009); Shen et al. (2022)
	Social network	A set of specific relationships among a group of people, in which the characteristics of those relationships can be used in dealing with the impacts of climate change	Mitchell (1969); Nguyen and Leisz (2021)
Sensitivity	Food	Food security and factors that contribute to farmers’ vulnerability in the face of climate change, such as crop diversification and the ability to store seeds and crops	Hahn et al. (2009); Adu et al. (2018)
	Water	Water availability for farmers to water their agricultural land in the face of climate change impacts	Adu et al. (2018); Ho et al. (2022)
	Land	Land conditions and factors that contribute to livelihood vulnerability to the effects of climate change, such as location, area, and land ownership status	Mitchell and McEvory (2019); Murken and Gornott (2022)
	Health	Health status that contributes to the vulnerability of farmers’ livelihood systems to the impacts of climate change, including the awareness of farmers to visit health services when sick	Hahn et al. (2009); Adu et al. (2018)
Exposure	Natural disasters and climate variability	Natural disasters due to climate variability experienced by farmers in the last ten years, including droughts, floods, and pest attacks	Hahn et al. (2009); Ho et al. (2022)

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Fig. 2.

Table 4

Fig. 3.

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Sub-component	LVI		Major component	LVI
Sub-component	Downstream area	Upstream area	Major component	Downstream area	Upstream area
Agricultural livelihood diversification	0.72	0.36	Livelihood strategy	0.62	0.48
Household dependent solely on agriculture	0.60	0.56
Family members working in different communities	0.55	0.52
Dependency ratio	0.41	0.49	Socio-demographic profile	0.34	0.42
Education level of household head	0.24	0.36
Farming experience of household head	0.36	0.42
No membership with any community	0.54	0.44	Social network	0.43	0.50
Households with media access in the house	0.44	0.12
No access to credit loans	0.30	0.51
Receive:give ratio	0.38	0.54
No access to local government assistance in the past 12 months	0.47	0.90
Crop diversity index	0.54	0.13	Food	0.55	0.52
Do not save crops	0.49	0.69
Do not save seeds	0.62	0.75
Do not have consistent water supply	0.95	0.54	Water	0.91	0.37
Utilize a natural water source for farming	0.97	0.29
Water conflict	0.81	0.27
Land location	0.59	0.26	Land	0.59	0.26
Area of rice field	0.22	0.11
Land tenure	0.56	0.51
Travel time to a health facility	0.54	0.38	Health	0.49	0.44
Family members did not see a doctor (medical services) during their illness	0.44	0.49	Health	0.49	0.44
Number of drought events in the past ten years	0.83	0.34	Natural disasters and climate variability	0.52	0.35
Number of flood events in the past ten years	0.15	0.27
Number of pest attacks events in the past ten years	0.51	0.50
Lost crops due to disaster	0.59	0.29
Overall				0.53	0.42

Contributing factor	LVI-IPCC
Contributing factor	Downstream area	Upstream area
Adaptive capacity	0.46	0.47
Sensitivity	0.66	0.42
Exposure	0.52	0.35
Overall	0.04	-0.05