Climate variability and rural livelihoods in the peruvian Andes : Variabilidad climática y diversificación de ingresos de los hogares en los Andes peruanos

This thesis aims to understand some of the effects of changes in intra-seasonal climate variability on household livelihoods in the Peruvian Andes. Concerns about the effects of climate change on the sustainability of Andean agricultural systems and, in general, concerns about the ability of rural households to adapt to increasing climate uncertainty motivate this thesis. The first study focuses on household decisions over crop portfolio diversification as a response to increasing climate variability. The study investigates whether Andean farmers respond by increasing crop diversity (measured by intercropping and crop diversification indices) or by switching to crops that better tolerate diverse environmental conditions. Based on fixed effects models that use a district panel of 1994 and 2012 agrarian censuses, the study finds that households in colder areas (