ALM UNDP

Summary:

The second volume of the UNU-EHS Graduate Research Series, written by Philine Oft, investigates the livelihood systems of farmers in the region of Piura, Peru, including influencing strategies and frameworks. This PhD dissertation examines existing coping and adaptation strategies with a special focus on financial service schemes, such as agricultural micro-credits or insurance funds. Coping and adaptation as well as financial risk management strategies all can contribute to increase the resilience of rural livelihoods. Of importance is the right mix or combination of all of these risk management strategies and instruments.

This PhD dissertation investigates the livelihood systems of farmers in the region of Piura in northern Peru. Most of these are exposed to and vulnerable to climate-related shocks like water scarcity and abundance, such as the El Niño phenomenon. The strategies of these households and the range of assets, their relations and interdependencies, as well as the prevailing social, institutional,political and environmental structures that are influencing the livelihoods are examined. A particular emphasis is put on analysing the coping and adaptation strategies of these households with a focus on the actions and available measures that they take in anticipation of or during a natural phenomenon, and to understand how they will act and adapt to these events in the future. The second part of the research explores which kind of financial services schemes are available to these rural households in the region and analyses the perception and understanding of insurance. An overview of the existing offer and demand is presented, and the necessary conditions to make these mechanisms sustainable and accessible to local farmers are evaluated.

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