Project Leader from SIAS: Dil Khatri PhD
Project Partners: ForestAction Nepal and Swedish University of Agricultural Science (SLU), Department of Urban and Rural Development
Duration: January 2020 to December 2023
Project description:
People in the Himalayan landscapes have long lived in contexts of chronic structural risks, generated by climate change, social structures as well as political and economic changes of the Nepalese society. One strategy to mitigate livelihood hazards has been to make large collective and individual labor investments in the landscape. This research will investigate such long-term landscape investments, in order to understand how people’s landscape use. It does so in a situation where patterns of out migration create a situation of rural labor scarcity, which has relatively unknown consequences for land uses and landscapes. The project will explore how smallholders cope with and adapt to environmental, economic and social changes, and how these processes affect the landscape they inhabit. It will also contribute to the growing body of sociopolitical nuanced understandings of resilience and adaptive capacity.
This is an inter-disciplinary research project and we will combine ethnographic methodology with the analytical concepts of resilience, risk, adaptive capacity and landesque capital, in order to understand smallholders’ strategies and practices of livelihood security and landscape investments.
The research will cover three case study sites, spanning from the High- Mountain, the Mid-Hills to the Chure regions of Nepal. These regions contrast in terms of biophysical conditions, social contexts, and migration dynamics, but all landscapes are intensively managed by poor smallholders.
The project activities include analytical workshops, joint field work, stakeholder workshops and seminars in three countries, and will provide more space for networking and collaboration. We will also develop further research applications and lay groundwork for writing a book.
Project Site: Sindhuli, Ramechhap and Dolakha
Team Leader: Kristina Marquardt
Project team:
SIAS: Dil Khatri, Dilli Prasad Poudel and Sanjaya Khatri
SLU: Kristina Marquardt, Adam Pain, Örjen Bartholdson and Kjell Hansen
ForestAction: Bishnu Hari Poudyal
