Gender matters - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 86

Rapid population increases, from 1 million living in the LVB in 1960 to 30
million in 2001 (UNEP 2006), has led to fragmentation of agricultural land,
which in turn has meant that previous strategies to relieve food insecurity,
whether through temporary migration to farm or graze animals and/or expansion
of agricultural production into new areas, have become less viable (Wandiga
2006). In the four communities studied, agricultural expansion is no longer
an option for farmers, who now are forced to sustain an average household
of seven on farming plots smaller than three acres (Gabrielsson et al. 2013).
Another consequence of the lack of fertile land is that these communities, which
previously engaged in heavy livestock rearing, are now seeing livestock numbers
being reduced significantly, with increasing dependence on food crops as a result
(Gabrielsson 2012). A growing rural population and reduction of land holdings
per household have necessitated an intensification of agricultural production
throughout the region, with shifting cultivation of diversified crops replaced
by predominately sedentary mono-cropping (Odada et al. 2006). This has also
contributed to the spread of invasive weeds, soil degradation and a further loss
of crop productivity (Smucker and Wisner 2008).
This fairly recent agricultural shift has left farming communities in the LVB
with a narrowing range of livelihood strategies available. While intensification is
still a viable livelihood strategy, in the short term it requires an increased supply
of (healthy) labour power, and in the long term, greater agricultural expertise
to make management environmentally and economically sustainable (Pretty
et al. 2011). In the four case-study communities, both these resources are
currently in short supply, due in part to the risks of exposure to many diseases,
including HIV/AIDS, and lack of technology transfer and training (Andersson
and Gabrielsson 2012). As a result, diversification is likely to continue to play
a key role in livelihoods in the region, especially since the yield-gains of new
farming technology display signs of levelling off and farming on its own is
unable to provide sufficient means of survival (Ellis 2000; Pretty et al. 2011).
Diversification includes the portfolio of activities that farming households
engage in outside farming, such as small businesses or day labour.
As we will see in the next sections, existing power differentials between men
and women may act to limit or support access to the resources necessary for
pursuing such diversification and/or intensification strategies - in the longer
term impeding or facilitating adaptation to climate change, and the possibilities
for smallholder livelihoods to pursue deliberate transformations towards a more
sustainable future.
The gender dimensions of farmer livelihoods in the LVB
Besides the biophysical and economic processes affecting adaptation to climate
variability and change, social norms play a significant role in rural farmers' ability
to respond to climate risks. In the LVB, and across farming communities of SSA
at large, there are two social dimensions in particular that delineate people's