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This study aims to analyze access of cotton growers to Sustainable Livelihoods Assets Pakistani Punjab.

This study uses the department for international development (DFID’s) sustainable livelihoods framework (DFID) (1999). Where data collection was done by using a well-structured questionnaire from 200 randomly selected cotton growers of the district Muzaffargarh. There are five livelihood assets (human assets, natural assets, financial assets, physical assets and social assets) in the SLF, this study has used three different indicators/proxies for each asset except natural assets, where four indicators were used to capture the salient features of the respondents’ access to that assets. Each indicator was given a weight by using the entropy technique to keep the consistency of the quantification. Livelihood assets indices were calculated in case of each livelihood asset for conducting Livelihood Assets Pentagon Analysis. Value of livelihood index ranged from 0–4.

Livelihoods Assets Pentagon analysis shows that cotton growers do not have proper access to all five livelihood assets. The asset with the highest capacity were social assets (sustainable livelihood index value = 0.3994), followed by natural assets (0.3294), financial assets (0.2511), human assets (0.2143) and physical assets (0.0897).

This study uses the SLF developed by DFID for analyzing factors affecting access to livelihoods assets of cotton growers in Pakistani Punjab. Sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural livelihoods lead to sustainable livelihoods where environment quality is taken into consideration. The study contains significant and new information.

Globally, rapid urbanisation characterised by increasing demand for housing and infrastructure needs has resulted in sand mining. In Ghana, sand mining can create or destroy the livelihoods of people in urban and rural areas. This paper examines the interaction between sand mining and land-based livelihood security in Awutu Senya District (ASD) and Awutu Senya East Municipality (ASEM).

Based on pragmatism philosophy, the study used a mixed methods approach to collect quantitative data and qualitative data from 431 household heads, ten core staff of the Assemblies, five traditional leaders, two tipper truck drivers' associations and ten farmer groups. Statistical Product and Service Solutions, version 21 and NVivo 12 facilitated quantitative data analysis and qualitative data analysis, respectively.

The study revealed that sand mining had different consequences on land-based livelihood security. Some block makers and truck drivers acknowledged positive effects of sand mining on their livelihoods while the majority of the household respondents and other key informants claimed that sand mining had negative effects on their livelihoods.

This paper focuses on two selected local government areas in Ghana. Therefore, the results may be generalised on the country with caution because local government areas have different characteristics. Further research is needed to contact the customers of sand in Accra.

This study provides new insight into the connections between sand mining and people's livelihood security in two local government areas. It also introduces a novel idea of collaboration among stakeholders to address negative effects associated with unsustainable sand mining.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the role of livelihood assets, strategies and local social networks in disaster response and recovery in post-disaster setting of 2013 Kedarnath disaster (India).

It identifies post disaster macro-spaces of Mandakini river valley (India) using change detection analysis and secondary data. Within these macro-spaces, the micro spaces of livelihood and social capital were assessed by selecting two villages for case study.

Most important issues faced by communities were loss of lives, livelihoods and access to relief aid. A shift in economic base of families suffering loss of livelihoods was observed as they switched from pilgrimage-based to skill-based opportunities. Geographical location and isolation play a crucial role in recovery trajectory of villages by influencing the social capital.

The paper being case study based deals two of the worst-affected villages; livelihood strategies adopted and social network may be influenced by the “victim” status of villages and may not be generalized for each disaster-affected area.

Bridging and bonding networks were significant in geographically isolated places, while “linkages” were beneficial in bringing new livelihood opportunities. Need to enhance the role of social capital by institutional intervention in form of capacity building was required.

The study suggests focus on human capital-based livelihood diversification programs taking geographical location and disaster context into account.

Coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19 is a health and humanitarian disaster threatening the livelihood and nutritional security of the people globally. This study examined the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic-related non-pharmaceutical measures on households' livelihood and food security in Pakistan.

Data collected through an online survey from 712 households were analyzed through descriptive statistics, t-test, and binary logit model.

More than 71% of the total households asserted that COVID-19 had affected their livelihoods negatively. Results revealed that food insecurity among households had increased more than two folds during one year of the COVID-19 compared to the pre-pandemic period. Moreover, the number of households in food insecure and severely food insecure groups had also increased significantly during the pandemic. Increasing monthly income was negatively associated with the COVID-19 induced food security and livelihood shocks implying that households with lower monthly income were likely to suffer more from the COVID-19. Households having agriculture as their main source of livelihood were 35 percentage points less likely to suffer the negative effects of the pandemic compared to wage earners. Wage-earners were 29 percentage points more likely to suffer worsened food security than salaried persons during the COVID-19 period. A large proportion of the households were forced to change their nutritional patterns to negate the adverse consequence of the pandemic on their livelihood and food security.

The cross-sectional nature of the collected data does not allow developing a causal relationship between COVID-19 implications and the food security of the households.

The pandemic has affected every sphere of life in developing countries but there is no study to assist the policymakers that how to minimize the impacts of the COVID-19 on the food security of households. Therefore, the study will fill this gap in the literature and help policymakers in developing countries to develop strategies to lessen the impact of the pandemic on food security.

Drought and salinity intrusion aggravated by climate change threaten agricultural livelihoods in Viet Nan's Mekong Delta. In response, authorities have built water management infrastructure for irrigation and salinity protection. This study assessed the impact of one such project, the Ba Lai dam in Ben Tre province, on the livelihoods of aquaculture farmers.

This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to assess the impact of the Ba Lai dam on the livelihood capitals of 18 farming households in four communes, located both upstream and downstream of the dam.

The authors find that, apart from some positive effects, the dam has also brought negative environmental consequences, such as increased water pollution. The authors also find that farmers have responded to the changes by adapting their livelihood practices.

The samples were relatively small, encompassing four communes in Ben Tre province. On the other hand, this case study is instructive to the many ongoing infrastructure projects in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta.

The project have caused an increase in water-related social conflict.

The case of the Ba Lai dam provides a cautionary example for infrastructure-based water management plans, both in Viet Nam and more broadly. The study suggests the need to strengthen community participation and prioritize impacts of farmers' capital assets when constructing water management infrastructure for climate change adaptation.

The development of tourism around Wolong Nature Reserve changes the local communities' ways of life. This study discusses how ecotourism affects the households' use of their capitals, the livelihood strategies as well as illustrates the impact on the habitats in the reserve through Department for International Development’s (DFID) Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) with data collected during fieldwork.

The study focuses on (1) Calculating Livelihood Capital Index. (2) The effects of livelihood capitals on livelihood strategy were calculated by multinomial logistic regression.

The study has yielded the following results: (1) In general, tourism promotes people's livelihood capitals. The growth in different types of households under tourism settings is ranked as full-time tourism operators > part-time tourism operators > traditional living households. (2) Tourism development mainly shifts livelihood strategies in two ways. Firstly, travel operating replaces some traditional practices that make livings; secondly, increased needs for potherbs and herbs from tourists let households enter into the hills to pick the plants more actively, which intensifies the destruction of giant panda's habitats. (3) Nine types of livelihood capitals indicators, namely farmland quality, distance between house and roads, number of laborers, average housing area, average income per person, whether family members being village cadres, and ever having received skills training shape livelihood strategies in different levels.

Three discussions are drawn from the study: (1) Enhancing the exploit for tourism resources to form a diversified competition. (2) Introducing herb growing to fulfill tourists' needs and improve people's livelihood in the meantime. (3) Optimizing the tourism surveillance and management system and improving the rules and regulations.

With the simultaneous increase of natural hazards and land- and resource-vulnerable women in the rural coasts of Bangladesh, large- and medium-scale infrastructure and livelihood programmes by government and non-government-organisations have been plenty. Yet, gender-responsive and livelihood-integrated infrastructure for these women's adaptation against increasing coastal vulnerabilities has been scarce. This paper outlines an infrastructure framework for improving their livelihood resilience in the scarcity of similar research.

A case study approach was assumed for this research. Based on a conceptual framework, in-depth interviews and focus-group-discussions with vulnerable women and key-informant-interview of NGO/government respondents were primarily used for data collection at Latachapli – a disaster-vulnerable coastal village in Southwest Bangladesh. Findings were derived primarily through inductive thematic coding.

Rural coastal women's livelihood vulnerabilities result from the lack of adequate, spatial/infrastructural and integrated (socio-economic) facilities and institutions. There is a clear need for a community-level and gender-responsive spatio-physical platform to create income generation/livelihood diversification opportunities irrespective of seasonalities, skill/capacity development and sharing/networking possibilities.

Due to case-specificity, research findings are representative but not generalisable. Further research is needed, especially at the intersection of gender, inequality and infrastructure design/planning regarding vulnerable women's resilience.

This proposed infrastructure framework can be considered for similar disaster-vulnerable rural coastal settings as a development policy and a physical infrastructure.

This case study's in-depth probing into vulnerable coastal women's livelihoods contributes to a growing body of knowledge, highlights their complex needs, and re-conceptualises gender-responsive infrastructure in similar communities' sustainable development. Piecemeal funding for social services will be more effective if coordinated with and allocated to appropriate engineering infrastructure. With access to proper community facilities and diverse livelihood opportunities all around the year (in this case, a multipurpose gender-sensitive infrastructure), communities would be more empowered to self-organise and support each other in delivering necessary soft services.

This study aims to assess the impact of mobile phones on the livelihoods of women microenterprises in two selected districts of Malawi.

This study adopted an interpretive qualitative approach. The authors conducted six focus group discussions with 33 women microenterprise owners in two selected districts of Malawi. This study was guided by the sustainable livelihood approach as an analytical framework.

The findings confirmed that to some extent use of mobile phones by women microenterprises helped them realise their livelihood outcomes. These included improved access to information, improved communication, improved marketing, reduced transport costs and improved efficiency and productivity. However, optimum benefits were highly curtailed by a number of factors such as poor information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure, security issues, high cost of talk time and data bundle, lack of ICT literacy, low education and sociocultural factors.

The findings provide evidence on the role of mobile phone technology play in promoting the value for women participating in business activities in disadvantaged communities. Policymakers and other stakeholders can use the findings as a basis for prioritising the improvement of mobile technology infrastructure in rural communities tailor-made to women microenterprises.

Livelihood recovery is a top priority to sustain resettled communities. The purpose of this paper is to assess livelihood vulnerability of those displaced and resettled in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, China, based on a newly constructed locational adjustable framework.

The study takes two resettlement villages in Sichuan Province as case study areas. Face-to-face surveys using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to collect primary data in 2012-2013.

The findings show that distant resettlement of people post the Wenchuan earthquake has resulted in an increased livelihood vulnerability within resettlers and that they face more hazards post-resettlement when compared to host residents in the resettlement areas.

The indicators considered for the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) are only a subset that represents typical factors applicable in the context of rural settings of China. The LVI may vary if more indicators are incorporated or coefficients obtained using different methods.

Highlights should be placed on livelihood assets and hazards to livelihood of the displaced people. During the transition period there is a pressing need for greater efforts to enhance migrants’ employment skills and assist them to restore viable livelihood activities.

This paper constructs a locational adjustable framework for analyzing and assessing livelihood vulnerability of disaster-induced resettlers from three aspects: livelihood hazards, livelihood assets and coping strategies.

This paper aims to examine adaptive livelihood strategies used by small-scale fishing households in the two coastal communities in Central Vietnam under the context of climate change-related stressors.

Field data were collected through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods including a review of secondary data, key-informant interviews, group discussions and household surveys with 300 sampled fishing households. The qualitative data support the analysis and discussion of quantitative data.

The results showed local households’ perception of the presence and influence of multiple non-climate and climate stressors on their fishery-based livelihoods in terms of employment and income in many ways. The affected households exerted to develop a diversity of adaptation methods within and out of fishing to sustain their livelihoods and cover a deficit in household income. The household socio-demographic characteristics particularly education, labour force, fishing equipment and social support played significant importance in characterising the categories of adaptation strategies among the survey households. The role of local governments in creating an enabling environment for local-level adaptation, as well as protecting marine and coastal ecosystems was rather limited despite their recognized importance.

The paper provides an empirical case of how small-scale fishing households in coastal communities in Central Vietnam are adapting to climate-related stressors. It suggests policy should promote livelihood diversification opportunities and address household-level constraints for adaptation. Fisheries management plan is urgently needed to control illegal fishing activities for sustainable use of coastal and marine fishery resources and the appropriate mechanism is important to stretch local governments’ resources for better supporting local-level adaptation.