Climate Change and Livelihoods: Implications of social exclusion on vulnerability to food security of women and low caste groups in Nepal.

Evidences show that climate change incidences affect adversely food security of marginal groups
whose livelihoods are based on natural resources. The incidences are more harmful to their
livelihood assets and strategies to achieve food resources because of both its higher sensitivity to
the episodes and their lower adaptive capacity to the negative affects of the events. The
preliminary finding from ongoing PhD research in the far western region of Nepal and the paper
presenter’s ten years long experiences in DFID funded livelihoods and forestry programme
including as climate change focal person in country, shows that the prevailing institutional
barriers cause them highly vulnerable from the risks to secure their food need. It claims that both
formal and informal economic, social and political institutional hurdles are the major reasons of
reducing their capability which increase their vulnerability and limit the adaptive capacity to
secure food in climate change variability and extreme events contexts. These institutional
impediments in the contexts of Nepal, majorly, include the institutions of land tenure, market,
caste and gender based occupation, wage labour, patron-client relations, schools and educations,
settlement, untouchability and caste based discrimination, social networking, bargaining power,
adaptation policies, and political engagement prevailing in rural area of the country. Therefore,
the paper suggests the reformations of institutional barriers are essential for increasing the ability
of such groups to resist impacts and adapt the negative impacts of the changes on production,
access and consumption of food of marginal groups in sustainable away.