ORIGINAL ARTICLE Livelihood vulnerability approach to assessing climate change impacts on mixed agro-livestock smallholders around the Gandaki River Basin in Nepal

Abstract Climate change vulnerability depends upon various factors and differs between places, sectors and communities. People in developing countries whose sub-sistence livelihood depends mainly upon agriculture and livestock production are identified as particularly vulnera-ble. Nepal, where the majority of people are in a mixed agro-livestock system, is identified as the world’s fourth most vulnerable country to climate change. However, there is limited knowledge on how vulnerable mixed agro-live-stock smallholders are and how their vulnerability differs across different ecological regions in Nepal. This study aims to test two vulnerability assessment indices, liveli-hood vulnerability index and IPCC vulnerability index, around the Gandaki River Basin of central Nepal. A total of 543 households practicing mixed agro-livestock were sur-veyed from three districts, namely Dhading, Syangja and Kapilvastu representing three major ecological zones: mountain, mid-hill and Terai (lowland). Data on socio-demographics, livelihood determinants, social networks, health, food and water security, natural disasters and cli-mate variability were collected and combined into the indices. Both indices differed for mixed agro-livestock smallholders across the three districts, with Dhading scor-ing as the most vulnerable and Syangja the least. Sub-stantial variation across the districts was observed in components, sub-components and three dimensions (ex-posure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity) of vulnerability. The findings help in designing site-specific intervention strategies to reduce vulnerability of mixed agro-livestock smallholders to climate change