Rural Livelihood Options for "a better and more sustainable future". Local perspectives from Myanmar and Morocco

Licentiate thesis, 2018

In 2015, state leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to

address global inequalities and respond to heightened concern about challenges,

arising from contemporary global change. This thesis contributes to addressing

these challenges, by extending the knowledge base that rural development

stakeholders can draw on to co-construct viable livelihood options for vulnerable

rural people. Paper I does so on the basis of cross-sectional household survey data

and clustering techniques, applied to explore the differentiated livelihood strategies

of rural people in Myanmar. Results of this study show that households engaged in

six relatively distinct livelihood strategies, which differed in terms of their relative

reliance on land-based vis-à-vis other income generation activities and their income

poverty implications. These findings imply differentiated vulnerabilities of rural

households, e.g. to climate change, shifting land-governance regimes and labour

market forces. Paper II is based on local knowledge research, exploring the

opportunity space for a tree-based adaptation of livelihoods and farming systems in

Morocco’s drylands. Results of this study show that respondents already maintain a

diversity of trees on their farms, but water scarcity, the low profitability of

production systems and social conflicts constitute critical barriers to an

agroforestry-based climate adaptation. Paper II further demonstrates the utility of

local knowledge in climate adaptation research, showing that local knowledge

methods facilitate inquiry into the contextual variability of livelihood contexts,

technology-adoption barriers and extension priorities that farmers perceive.

Brought together, both papers contribute to realising the vision of “a better and

more sustainable future” for rural people.