scholarly journals Seasonal labour migration and livelihood in the middle hill of Nepal: Reflections from Arghakhanchi District

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanhaiya Sapkota

People’s livelihood in the villages of the middle hill of Nepal are based on farming system. The relationship between climate change and seasonal labor migration in the middle hill areas is a relatively understudied research topic, particularly from an empirical point of view. This article aims at contributing to the literature by analyzing the relationship between livelihoods and human mobility in two rural communities located in the Province 5, Arghakhanchi district, Nepal. Traditional rain-fed agriculture is the most important economic activity in the area. This article highlights differences in livelihood and human mobility patterns between households. The economy of the middle hill is primarily agrarian. Over 80% of the population of the middle hill districts still lives in rural areas/settings, where levels of poverty are higher than in the neighbouring countries. They depend on farming and collecting forest products for their livelihoods. In Arghakhanchi district, during the dry season, many migrate in search of temporary work as labourers particularly in Indian states. Arghakhanchi is the district where the proportion of inhabitants from low income is relatively higher than the other surrounding districts of Province 5. These people are marginalized and experience high rates of poverty, low levels of education and poor health. They are highly vulnerable to climate change, due to poverty and dependence on climate-sensitive livelihoods in a vulnerable region. Consequently, more households are likely to participate in seasonal migration and those already migrating are credible to do so for longer times. Currently, such migrants take up low-paying unskilled works, mainly in urban areas in Uttarakhand, Panjab and Bhopal of India, which enables them to make meager savings, hardly enough to repay the debt of their family has incurred during food shortages. In the study area, the non-agricultural diversification is widespread and income from non-agricultural activities exceeds agricultural income. However, though mobility patterns in the area are determined primarily by broader economic considerations.Research Nepal Journal of Development Studies Vol.1(1) 2018 42-57

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim R. Manturuk

What are the mechanisms responsible for homeowners’ better mental health? Social disorganization theory suggests that the relationship between homeownership and mental health is mediated by perceived sense of control, trust in neighbors, and residential stability. This hypothesis is tested using data collected from respondents in 30 low–wealth urban areas. Using propensity score matching and regression models, I find that low–income homeowners report a greater sense of control and trust in their neighbors than comparable renters. Homeownership likewise has an impact on mental health, but the effect is entirely mediated by perceived sense of control. Part of that mediating effect is related to avoiding serious delinquency in mortgage payments. However, subjective trust and residential mobility did not mediate the relationship between homeownership and mental health. The study findings are discussed in light of the need for a cohesive theory of homeownership, particularly given changing economic realities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 787-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjorn Stevens ◽  
David Farrell ◽  
Lutz Hirsch ◽  
Friedhelm Jansen ◽  
Louise Nuijens ◽  
...  

Abstract Clouds over the ocean, particularly throughout the tropics, are poorly understood and drive much of the uncertainty in model-based projections of climate change. In early 2010, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology established the Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) on the windward edge of Barbados. At 13°N the BCO samples the seasonal migration of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), from the well-developed winter trades dominated by shallow cumulus to the transition to deep convection as the ITCZ migrates northward during boreal summer. The BCO is also well situated to observe the remote meteorological impact of Saharan dust and biomass burning. In its first six years of operation, and through complementary intensive observing periods using the German High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft (HALO), the BCO has become a cornerstone of efforts to understand the relationship between cloudiness, circulation, and climate change.


Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Hellin ◽  
Jean Balié ◽  
Eleanor Fisher ◽  
Ajay Kohli ◽  
Melanie Connor ◽  
...  

Climate change will continue to have a largely detrimental impact on the agricultural sector worldwide because of predicted rising temperatures, variable rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. Reduced crop yields will lead to higher food prices and increased hardship for low income populations, especially in urban areas. Action on climate change is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13) and is linked to the Paris Climate Agreement. The research challenge posed by climate change is so complex that a trans-disciplinary response is required, one that brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in networks where the lines between “research” and “development” become deliberately blurred. Fostering such networks will require researchers, throughout the world, not only to work across disciplines but also to pursue new South–North and South–South partnerships incorporating policy-makers and practitioners. We use our diverse research experiences to describe the emergence of such networks, such as the Direct Seeded Rice Consortium (DSRC) in South and Southeast Asia, and to identify lessons on how to facilitate and strengthen the development of trans-disciplinary responses to climate change.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schäbitz ◽  
Verena Foerster ◽  
Asfawossen Asrat ◽  
Andrew S. Cohen ◽  
Melissa S. Chapot ◽  
...  

<p><span>Humans </span><span>have been adapting to more demanding habitats in the course of their evolutionary history</span><span>. </span><span>Nevertheless</span><span>, environmental changes coupled with overpopulation naturally limit competition for resources. In order to find such limits, reconstructions of climate and </span><span>population changes </span><span>are increasingly used for the continent of our origin, Africa.</span> <span>However, </span><span>continuous and high-resolution records of climate-human interactions are still scarce. </span></p><p><span>Using a 280 m sediment core from Chew Bahir*, a wide tectonic basin in southern Ethiopia,</span> <span>we reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions during the development of <em>Homo sapiens.</em> The complete multiproxy record of the composite core covers the last ~600 ka </span><span>, allowing tests of hypotheses about the influence of climate change on human evolution and technological innovation from the Late Acheulean to the Middle/Late Stone Age, and on dispersal within and out of Africa</span><span>. </span></p><p><span>Here we present results from the uppermost 100 meters of the Chew Bahir core, spanning the last 200 kiloyears (ka). </span><span>The record shows two modes of environmental change that are associated with two types of human mobility. The first mode is a long-term trend towards a more arid climate, overlain by precession-driven wet-dry alternation. Through comparison with the archaeological record, humid episodes appear to have led to the opening of ‘green’ networks between favourable habitats and thus to increased human mobility on a regional scale. The second mode of environmental change resembles millennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events, which seem to coincide with enhanced vertical mobility from the Ethiopian rift to the highlands, especially in the time frame between ~65–21 ka BP. The coincidence of climate change and human mobility patterns help to define the limiting conditions for early <em>Homo sapiens</em> in eastern Africa.</span></p><p><span>___________________</span></p><p><span>*</span> <span>cored in the context of HSPDP (<em>Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project</em>) and CRC </span><span>(<em>Collaborative Research </em><em>Centre</em>) 806 “<em>Our way to Europe</em>”</span></p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 1250005 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARUN S. MALIK ◽  
STEPHEN C. SMITH

We put in perspective the papers in this special issue by characterizing different forms of adaptation to climate change and discussing the role of adaptation in a developing country context. We highlight adaptation decision-making under uncertainty, empirics of autonomous adaptation, and data and methodological challenges. We identify unresolved questions, emphasizing interactions between autonomous and planned adaptation, adaptation externalities, and the relationship between adaptation and conflict.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 160950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Panigutti ◽  
Michele Tizzoni ◽  
Paolo Bajardi ◽  
Zbigniew Smoreda ◽  
Vittoria Colizza

The recent availability of large-scale call detail record data has substantially improved our ability of quantifying human travel patterns with broad applications in epidemiology. Notwithstanding a number of successful case studies, previous works have shown that using different mobility data sources, such as mobile phone data or census surveys, to parametrize infectious disease models can generate divergent outcomes. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent epidemic modelling results may vary when using different proxies for human movements. Here, we systematically compare 658 000 simulated outbreaks generated with a spatially structured epidemic model based on two different human mobility networks: a commuting network of France extracted from mobile phone data and another extracted from a census survey. We compare epidemic patterns originating from all the 329 possible outbreak seed locations and identify the structural network properties of the seeding nodes that best predict spatial and temporal epidemic patterns to be alike. We find that similarity of simulated epidemics is significantly correlated to connectivity, traffic and population size of the seeding nodes, suggesting that the adequacy of mobile phone data for infectious disease models becomes higher when epidemics spread between highly connected and heavily populated locations, such as large urban areas.


Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Sohyun Park ◽  
Aram Yang ◽  
Hui Jeong Ha ◽  
Jinhyung Lee

Social mixing is one of the key objectives of the housing policy in OECD countries. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the largest affordable housing construction program in the US since 1986, has recently set creating mixed-income communities as one of the standards. As a project-based program, LIHTC developments are likely to influence residential mobility; however, little is known about its empirical effects. This study investigated whether new LIHTC projects are effective at attracting heterogeneous income groups to LIHTC neighborhoods, thereby contributing to creating mixed-income communities. Using unique individual-level household movement data combined with origin–destination neighborhood characteristics, we developed zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models to analyze the LIHTC’s impact on residential mobility patterns in Franklin County, Ohio, US, from 2011 to 2015. The results suggest that the LIHTC attracts low-income households while deterring higher-income families, and therefore the program is not proved to be effective at creating mixed-income neighborhoods.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 585-603
Author(s):  
Sofie Kirt Strandbygaard ◽  
Otto Anker Nielsen ◽  
Alan Keith Spence Jones ◽  
Bo Grönlund ◽  
Lotte Bjerregaard Jensen

In pursuing fear-reduction strategies in public transport, the total experience of accessing rail stations should be taken into account. This article correlates passengers’ fear of crime at train stations with neighborhood types and income data within the pedestrian catchment area. The research is based on urban form and income around 84 S-train stations in the Copenhagen metropolitan area and nine years of passenger surveys on fear of crime at these stations. The study reveals a significant positive correlation between low income and fear of crime; the lower the income in an urban area, the more unsafe passengers feel at the station. However, when controlling for the relationship between income, safety and neighborhood type, stations in neighborhoods with urban form associated with low incomes have the lowest ratings of safety. The research indicates that train passengers’ sense of security is connected to neighborhood type and the city’s planning characteristics. This is an important finding for urban designers and planners working on the integration of public transport and station design in urban areas.


Author(s):  
Miguel Ribeiro ◽  
Nuno Nunes ◽  
Valentina Nisi ◽  
Johannes Schöning

Abstract In this paper, we present a systematic analysis of large-scale human mobility patterns obtained from a passive Wi-Fi tracking system, deployed across different location typologies. We have deployed a system to cover urban areas served by public transportation systems as well as very isolated and rural areas. Over 4 years, we collected 572 million data points from a total of 82 routers covering an area of 2.8 km2. In this paper we provide a systematic analysis of the data and discuss how our low-cost approach can be used to help communities and policymakers to make decisions to improve people’s mobility at high temporal and spatial resolution by inferring presence characteristics against several sources of ground truth. Also, we present an automatic classification technique that can identify location types based on collected data.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (171) ◽  
pp. 20200673
Author(s):  
Maxime Lenormand ◽  
Juan Murillo Arias ◽  
Maxi San Miguel ◽  
José J. Ramasco

Obtaining insights into human mobility patterns and being able to reproduce them accurately is of the utmost importance in a wide range of applications from public health, to transport and urban planning. Still the relationship between the effort individuals will invest in a trip and the importance of its purpose is not taken into account in individual mobility models that can be found in the recent literature. Here, we address this issue by introducing a model hypothesizing a relation between the importance of a trip and the distance travelled. In most practical cases, quantifying such importance is undoable. We overcome this difficulty by focusing on shopping trips (for which we have empirical data) and by taking the price of items as a proxy. Our model is able to reproduce the long-tailed distribution in travel distances empirically observed and to explain the scaling relationship between distance travelled and item value found in the data.


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