Autonomous Adaptation Strategies to Multiple Stressors: A Case Study with Marginal Communities in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

Recently, autonomous adaptation strategies have gained momentum for sustaining the livelihoods and strengthening the social-ecological resilience in the face of a rapidly changing multiple stressor environment. This study, conducted in the sodicity-affected parts of Azamgarh district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India, tries to show how an inextricable interconnection among the traditional social systems, local knowledge, and surrounding environment has been critical to the well-being of indigenous peoples dependent heavily on natural resources. A combination of social-ecological methods including transect walk and site visits through foot-walk and canoeing, event ecology, participant observations, focus group discussions, personal interviews, and data taken from satellite imagery were applied to understand the changing dynamics of Bhar community-managed wetland ecosystems on livelihoods and social-ecological resilience. Results indicated that ecological (e.g., high soil pH, seasonal waterlogging) and climatic stressors (e.g., erratic rainfall) imposing livelihood risks to the Bhar community are increasingly becoming unbearable due to compounded impacts of socioeconomic (rampant poverty and pervasive land use) and institutional (weak governance and poor reach of formal institutions) stressors. In the past three decades or so, Badaila lake area has shrunk considerably with an accompanying increase in soil sodicity making this wetland ecosystem further vulnerable to the external shocks and putting the Bhar community livelihoods at risk and compelling them to evolve location-specific autonomous adaptation strategies. These included relying primarily on integrated access to and management of upper (grazing and rice-wheat), middle (rice-wheat, local vegetables, oils, and pulses), and low (cultivating local rice) landscapes as well as acquisition of wetland resources (wild rice tinni, fish, etc.) to adapt to these stressors. When livelihood resilience is perturbed by the stressors, Bhar people often migrate to cities in search of gainful jobs and also become beneficiaries of certain social security schemes to strengthen their livelihoods. This study has implications on maintaining social-ecological resilience of nature-dependent communities living in marginal environments, exposed to multiple stressors, and relying heavily on integrated autonomous adaptation strategies.