Perception Concepts of Beneficiaries for Strengthening the Livelihood Options While Developing Resilience to Climate Change - A Case Study of DFID Project in in Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

To study and analyze the perception of beneficiary households for strengthening the livelihood options while developing resilience to climate change a study was carried out in two Panchayats ( Naineti & Kathlibharan) of rural areas  of HP. Forest Department of HP acted as a facilitator and coordinated with other line departments through VFDC and GDST to execute various components of the project in the field. “with” and “without” approach was used for analyzing the impact of project intervention. Multistage purposive cum random sampling techniques were used for selecting villages and households. Two panchayats adjoining these selected panchayats having similar agro-climatic conditions were also selected to draw a sample of beneficiaries for each village to act as the control. Data analysis worked out in percentage suggests  that higher literacy rate, family size and land holding among the beneficiary households has played a significant role in their perception of  the Strengthening the livelihood options for sustainable economic growth, productive employment and protection of Environment which they found as quite effective in solving their conflicts, increase in farm income,  reduction in dependency on forests by growing plantations of fuel, fodder and timber on their own land. Participation in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercise though low, reflects that people take longer time to come out of inertia and understand the projects benefits at the planning stage. Beneficiary households found that rural development activities with Incentives have helped them to adopt PFM approach.  Improvement in infra structures has been quite effective to take their produce directly to the market yard to get some better prices. Incentives provided under the project have certainly triggered a thought-provoking process towards their participation which provided a support to sustain their lively hood and generate income to improve socio-economic profile. Sensitivity of beneficiary households towards forest offences has further helped in restocking the forests and use of forests and other natural resources on sustainable basis. Use of LPG/ Gober gas in place of fuel wood is a step towards carbon sequestration from the environment on the one hand while reducing the burden on the forest for the extraction of fuel wood –a step to mitigate the effects of climate change. Meeting of fodder requirements occasionally from own land and stall feeding has certainly reduced the biotic pressure on the forest land as a result trampling of young shoots of plant species due to open grazing could be reasonably avoided.