| This study investigated ways in which communities may or may not increase their ability to deal with change and create sustainable livelihoods. Resilience is an important aspect of the dynamics of livelihood change and responses. Resilience building refers to increasing the ability of a social-ecological system to absorb perturbations, and, in response, to adjust, learn, self-organize and re-organize for sustainable livelihoods. Resilience building in a particular social-ecological system was investigated through documentation of livelihoods change over a 50-year period in the village of Yangkhoo, Darjeeling District, India. The objectives of the study were: (1) to describe and understand a livelihood system, (2) to identify key drivers of change and evaluate the impacts of these changes on a livelihood system, including institutional responses; and (3) to derive policy lessons for managing resource-based livelihoods with regards to power relations, cross-scale linkages and resilience building.;The villagers have faced a series of changes and demonstrated a profound capacity to adjust. Faced with the closure of a local tea estate closure followed by external interventions, political unrest, and infrastructure development, the post-1965 subsistence economy has progressively evolved into a diversified market economy, a shift that has increased agrobiodiversity in the village, as compared to the pre-1965 tea monoculture period, and has resulted in resilience building. (Abstract shortened by UMI.);The village was selected by considering: the occurrence of past crises, shocks, and stresses to enable the study of change, the land ownership in order to examine the complexity of livelihood options and responses, and the openness of the village in order to examine the role of cross-scale institutional linkages. Field data were collected from September 2004 to mid-January 2005, using Rapid Rural Appraisal and semi-structured interviews. In the village, a sample size of 36 households (53%) was obtained from a total of 68 households. Key informants outside the village (NGOs, governmental agencies and private sector) were also interviewed (n = 13). |
