The risk of climate disasters such as drought and floods is a central fact in the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of rural people and will become more important as the impacts of climate change are felt.  But vulnerability to these disasters is felt differently by poorer and better-off households, men and women, and is shaped by the broader context of policies, institutions, economic and environmental trends. For example, the resilience of pastoralists and dryland farmers to drought has been eroded in recent decades by insecurity of land tenure, increasing levels of conflict, misplaced policies supporting unsustainable crop production and failure to support more sustainable systems.

In such a context, there is a need for multiple forms of external assistance: long-term policies to reduce vulnerability, but also well-planned and well-targeted relief and mitigation measures. NRI has applied these insights in a range of recent research and consultancy projects. For example we have investigated impacts of drought on pastoralists in Southern Ethiopia, for Save the Children (USA) authored a Policy Options Paper on Drought Management in the Livestock Sector for the World Bank, and produced a scoping study on a possible pastoralist policy for DFID.

The impacts of climate change on rural livelihoods will be complex, experienced at different scales and in different livelihood domains, and will go well beyond increased likelihood of major disasters.  A Group member served as Lead Author on the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-authored a study on climate change impacts in dryland agrarian societies for the World Bank. NRI is a partner in a major research project on Strengthening Local Agricultural Innovation Systems in Tanzania and Malawi to Adapt to Climate Change and Variability, and is actively developing work on other themes within climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Fop more information please see NRI Publications on Climate Change.