Patterns of Persistent and mode of adaptation

1. PATTERNS OF SUBSISTENCE
Shree Maharjan
8 July 2015
1

2. • Culture is the tacit agreement to let the
means of subsistence disappear behind
the purpose of existence. Civilization is the
subordination of the latter to the former
- Karl Kraus
2

3. Outline of the presentation
1. Sustainable Livelihood Framework
2. Background: Subsistence and Adaptation
3. Mode of subsistence
4. Research Idea
5. Conclusion
3

4. SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK
Hum
an
capit
al
Financi
al
capital
Physic
al
resour
ces
Socia
l
capit
al
Natural
resourc
es
Vulnerability
context:
Shocks/Stresses
Trends
Seasonality
Structures
Processes
Livelihoodstrategies
External support
and cooperation
Structures – level of government and private sectors; Processes – laws, policies, culture, institutions
Technology Policy
4
Source: Carney, 1998, DFID 2001
(modified)

5. BACKGROUND: ADAPTATION
1. Beneficial adjustment to a particular environment
2. Unique adaptation of human being among other species – capacity of
produce and reproduce culture and enable to creatively adapt to an
extraordinary range of radically different environment.
3. CULTURAL ADAPTATION – consist of complex ideas, activities and
technologies that enable to survive and even thrive to the environment
4. Balances the needs of a population and the potential of its environment.
5

6. BACKGROUND: ADAPTATION (1)
5. Diff people have managed to adapt to diverse range of natural environments
– from Arctic snowfields to Polynesian coral islands, from Sahara Desert to the
Amazon rainforest
6. Cultural adaptation is fundamental to human survival in these environments.
7. Unit of adaptation is both organisms and their environment.
8. Organisms and environments form a dynamic interacting systems – called
‘ECOSYSTEM’
6

7. BACKGROUND: ADAPTATION (2)
9. People adapt to the environment by means of their cultures that may change over
the course of time – CULTURAL EVOLUTION (different from PROGRESS – more
advanced toward perfection)
10. People and all other organisms must have the potential to adjust to or become a
part of it.
11. Sometimes, possibility of CONVERGENT or PARALLEL EVOLUTION –
independent development of similar cultural adaptation to similar environment
conditions by different peoples with different ancestral cultures. Cheyenne Indians
and Comanche or farming in South West Asia and Mesoamerica
7

8. BACKGROUND: ADAPTATION (3)
12. Recognition of stability is important as well as change involved in cultural adaptation and
evolution. E.g. the life of IPs in New England and Quebec was fairly stable over 5,000 years or so.
13. Ethnic groups living in the same broad habitat often share certain culture traits, based on
which Anthropologists have mapped culture clusters known as CULTURE AREAs – geographical
regions having a number of societies with similar ways of life.
14. Environment and technology are not the only factors that determine a society’s pattern of
subsistence, social and political factors also influence how technology is applied to the
problem of staying alive
15. The cultural features that are fundamental in the society’s way of making its living are called
CULTURAL CORE. Muslims and Jews abstain eating pork and Hindus don’t eat beef.
8

9. MODES OF SUBSISTENCE
• Human societies all across the world have developed a cultural
infrastructure, compatible with the natural resources.
• Each mode of subsistence involves both resources and technology to
effectively capture and utilize to fulfill the society’s needs.
Food
Foraging
Society
Crop
cultivation in
Gardens:
Horticulture
Crop
cultivation:
Agriculture
Mixed
farming:
crop and
Animal
Intensive
Agriculture
& Industrial
Pastoralism
9

10. FOOD FORAGING SOCIETIES
• The mode of subsistence involve in this society
were hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants,
foods.
• At present, almost a quarter of million people (less
than 0.005% of the world population of about 6
billion) still support themselves mainly as foragers.
• Foragers constitute a rational response to
particular ecological, economic and socio-political
realities.
• For at least 2000 years, they have met the
demands for commodities such as furs, hides,
feathers, ivory, pearls, fishes and honey etc.
10

11. LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK ANALYSIS
Hum
an
capit
al
Financi
al
capital
Physic
al
resour
ces
Socia
l
capit
al
Natural
resourc
es
Vulnerability
context:
Shocks/Stresses
Trends
Seasonality
Structures
Processes
Livelihoodstrategies
External support
and cooperation
Structures – level of government and private sectors; Processes – laws, policies, culture, institutions
Technology Policy
11

12. CHARACTERISTICS OF FOOD FORAGING COMMUNITIES (1)
• Still surviving in marginal areas that are not rich in food and fuel, including mobility
• Limited range of mobility of naturally available food sources – availability water is
crucial factor for their mobility.
• Small size local groups, typically fewer than a hundred people
• Flexible division of labor by gender, however, work of women is no less arduous
than that of men, Ju/’hoansi women walk 12 miles a day 2/3 times to gather food.
• Food sharing among adults and egalitarian social
relationship
• Cultural adaptations and technology among foragers
– hunting technologies/techniques – mobility
12

13. FOOD PRODUCING SOCIETIES
• The next truly momentum in human history was the domestication of
plants and animals
• New cultural transformation, new economic arrangements, social
structures, ideological patterns either based on plant or animal or
both
• The gradual transition of 10,000 years with the beginning of Neolithic
or new stone age – stone based technologies and depended on
domesticated plants and animals
• Radical transformation in almost every aspect of cultural systems –
Neolithic revolution or Neolithic transition.
• Dependency on domesticated crops and reduced the mobility
• Initially, food production appeared largely like unintended by-product
of existing food management practices.
13

14. CROP CULTIVATION IN GARDENS: HORTICULTURE
• Small gardeners cultivate fruit and vegetables without irrigation, plow and
fertilizer
• Not year round subsistence – mixed crops (less vulnerable to pest and
diseases
• Slash and burn cultivation (Swidden farming) in tropics – ecologically
sound, energy efficient than modern farming
14

15. CROP CULTIVATION: AGRICULTURE
Ag. Societies
• More intensive food production by
growing food plants like grains, tubers,
fruits and vegetables in soil prepared
using technologies, irrigation, fertilizers
and plow
• Also fuel powered tractors in developed
countries especially in larger plots of
lands
• The surplus good may be traded or sold
for cash
• Political power is centralized in the hands
of a socially elite class
• It’s not always easy to differentiate
horticulture and agriculture
Characteristics of Ag. Societies
• Development of fixed settlements
together near to cultivated fields
• The food production lent itself to a
different kind of social organization –
some produces food for all; others
invents or manufacture equipment and
other occupations – pottery, textiles,
housing etc.
• More organized society
• People formed multifamily kinship
groups
15

16. MIXED FARMING:
• Mixed subsistence strategy and combine crops
with animals
• Both barns or fenced off and free range based
on cultural traditions, ecological circumstances
and animal habits
• Transhumance – seasonal movement of
livestock
Crops
Fisheries
Animal
husbandry
16

17. PASTORALISM
• One of the Human adaptation to the environment – breeding and
managing large herds of domesticated grazing animals
• Specialized way of life centered on breeding and herding animals
• Completely dependent of livestock for daily survival,
• Families in pastoral cultures may own herds of hundreds of grazing
animals – everyday routines
• Not settled permanently, follow their large herds to new pastures
regularly
• Nomadic Pastoralism of Bakhtairi herders in the Zagros Mountains,
Iran
17

18. INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
• With intensification of agriculture, some farming villages became towns and
even cities
• Unlike horticulturists and pastoralists, city dwellers are only indirectly
concerned with adapting to natural environment.
• More complex society because of marked inequality, ranks, different kinds
of work, disaggregation, more formal and bureaucratic, specialized political
institutions
• The industrial revolution quickly spread to other parts of the globe – water,
wind and steam followed by oil, gas and diesel fuel replaced human labor
and hand tools
• Large scale industrialization of many societies and technological inventions
utilizing oil, electricity and nuclear energy (since 1940s) dramatically
changes in social and economic organization worldwide.
• Late 20th century, the electronic digital revolution has changed the
production, distribution of information for economic activity in the society
18

19. Time
Household
Wellbeing
Flood
CopingResilienceFully Adapted
Development
Conceptualizing coping, resilience and
adaptation
Noise
Trend
Threshold
Shock
Ajaya Dixit adapted from Aarjan Dixit (2010), WRI
19

20. FACTORS INFLUENCING ADAPTATION TO
CLIMATE CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR IN
NEPAL AND BANGLADESH
Advisors:
Maharjan, K. L. (Main)
Togawa, M. (Co-Advisor)
Kawamura, K. (Co-Advisor)
20

21. BRIEF BACKGROUND
• LDCs in South Asia, dependent in agriculture sector, highly
vulnerable to climate change impacts and variability – floods, severe
droughts, landslides in coming decades
• High risks, vulnerabilities, but least adaptive capacity
• Agriculture is the most sensitive sector in terms of climate risks and
vulnerabilities (IIED, 2011; Baas and Ramasamy, 2008)
• Many observed changes and impacts in agriculture and food security
due to climate change such as lost of agricultural land, decrease in
agricultural/livestock production, lost of prominent species,
emergence of new invasive species etc.
21

22. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
• Implementation of adaptation plans (NAPAs) and policies are very weak,
incomplete and not efficient in both Nepal and Bangladesh
• Lack of clear guidance on the mandates, clear authority and roles of
devolved structures, inefficient planning and lack of supervision
• Factors influencing the successful planning and implementation of
adaptation and development plans are not considered important
• Lack of full and effective participation of community in the planning to
implementation of such interventions
22

23. RATIONALE (1)
• Important to carry out researches and studies on adaptation in Ag for CC
negotiations at all levels (IIED, 2011 and Sova, et. al., 2012)
• Prioritized to integrate adaptation plans into development plans and some
development plans at local levels also focused on building resilience of
the communities.
• important to plan effectively and analyze the factors including cost and
benefits associated with climate change adaptation and development
plans prior to implement in the fields.
23

24. RATIONALE
• Many direct and indirect factors relating to effective planning and costing
of adaptation plans, its implementation that needs to map out in the
process including identification of most probable CC impacts, required
response, effective planning and estimation of budget for implementation
in different scales (Chambwera, et.al., 2011)
• Factors such as social, economic and ecological/environment and
participation of communities in the process affecting the effective
planning and costing of adaptation interventions that are key and need to
analyze from local to national levels to mainstream adaptation to
development plans (Maharjan et.al., 2011)
24

25. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Coping
strategies
Adaptation
plans
Factors:
Human
Policy
Socio-cultural
Economic
Technical
Natural
Physical
Anthropogenic
reasons
Natural
Causes
Climate
change risks
and
vulnerabilities
25

26. CONCLUSION
• Human wants are unlimited, but limited resources
• Facing many challenges for food, shelter and other
necessities
• Human must gather, produce or buy the means to
satisfy these needs
• A range of highly contrasting natural environments
with different cultural and natural adaptation during
the span of human existence
• By inventing and applying various technologies,
human have developed a great variety of distinctive
subsistence to harness energy and process required
resources
26

27. WE ARE DEDICATED TO MAINTAINING A NATURAL,
SAFE AND GREEN ENVIRONMENT…
so that our children can enjoy the same resources
and beauty that we have for generations.
ARIGATO
GOJAIMASU
THANK YOU
VERY MUCH
27