Climate Change Impact on Rural Livelihoods of Small Landholder: A Case of Rajanpur, Pakistan

Climate change is one of the major challenges for agriculture, food security and rural livelihoods for billions of poor people in the world. Agriculture is most vulnerable to climate change due to its high dependence on climate and weather. Asian agriculture sector is already facing many problems relating to sustainability. The present study was conducted to identify the impact of climate change on the socio-economic status and livelihood of farmers. A sample of 280 farmers’ respondents was selected from tehsil Jampur of Rajanpur district. The data were obtained through well designed interview schedule and analyzed statistically. All the respondents reported that climate change had always influences on the income and agricultural yield. Climate change had influenced on income and economics weighted scores (1400). Although there were differences between (before -2930832.1) and (current -2684400.0) annual income. All of the respondents reported that climate change had very high effect on the practicing crop diversification while, more than half (53.0%) of the respondents reported that climate change had very high effect on planting different crops. The rank order regarding crop diversification was on high rank due to the high weighted score (1400). All of the respondents reported that climate change had greatly extent on forest burning. The comparisons of different means of different factors like mobility, health, economics, income, environmental destruction, agricultural yields and size of land holding affected by climate change were non-significant. The comparisons of different means of different factors like deforestation, pollution from vehicles, pollution from power generation, pollution from waste, pollution from agri. Activities, shifting cultivation, forest burning and any other factors were non-significant