Communities and Livelihood Strategies in Developing Countries

Sustainability of rural communities is threatened by a plethora of factors including climate change and disasters which interact in an intricate manner in making rural people vulnerable and poor. This book is an output of the empirical research on communities and livelihood strategies in developing countries. It reveals how the (rural) communities are functioning and earning their livelihoods by, making best use of the resources, local/internal and or external/new, and combination of the two, available to them, to counteract various challenges they face, with the ultimate goal of becoming resilient, resilient to any shocks, local or global, and sustain it. Local governance is identified to be crucial in ensuring sustainable livelihood as it ensures healthy collaboration between them, on the one hand, and civil society and the community, on the other hand, in promoting self-sustaining development trajectories. Similarly, the role of social capital cannot be ignored as it brings in community drive and sense of purpose, direction and solidarity among community members which facilitate problem-solving in periods of crises and disasters.§