Temporal Changes in Livelihood and Land Usage Patterns: Case Study of a Primitive Tribe, Van Raji, from Uttarakhand, India

Livelihood diversification may be of several types and it is believed that land usage patterns change with time, due to the changing livelihood patterns of mountain communities driven by multiple factors. This study was conducted to present the development of the Van Rajis with the developmental paradigm and to understand the changes in livelihood and land usage patterns in context of various factors, brought by several interventions made by Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA). Forest Landscape Restoration approach was adopted by CHEA as a Nature-based Solution to combat the problems faced by the tribes. The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data collated from households and key-informants from community. The findings revealed that with temporal change in livelihood practices and land-use pattern, tribes were forced to look for alternative livelihood strategies, irrespective of various barriers such as no/poor education, small land holdings, etc. Such strategies would enable them to combat with the problem of income instability, food and nutritional insecurity. It is evident from the study that, livelihoods in tribal areas are vulnerable to factors such as climate change, unemployment, poor infrastructures, etc. Hence, tribal people experience various pressures and opportunities (livestock or land productivity) which are adopted as livelihood and coping strategies. This coping intent ability has arisen due to temporal change in the land utilization pattern in the present challenging scenario. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can be an effective framework for establishing an alignment between biodiversity conservation and the sustainable development of the tribal communities.