Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed Aug. 15, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-69).

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M.A. / At the local-level, rural households in Lesotho, like across much of Southern Africa, suffer high livelihood vulnerability from their experience of poverty, marginalisation and dependence on natural resources. In Lesotho, rural households experience similar livelihood vulnerability from their exposure and sensitivity to these numerous social, economic and environmental stressors. In the coming decades, rural households, like those in Phelantaba village, northern Lesotho, will face even greater livelihood vulnerability from the impacts of anthropogenically influenced climate change. This phenomenon will possibly become one of the greatest stressors that rural livelihoods in the village will experience and have to adapt to. The overall objective of this dissertation was to undertake a site-specific assessment of the vulnerability of rural livelihoods in Phelantaba village to the impacts of future climate change. The rationale behind this was that the impacts of future climate change will not be spatially homogenous across a region. A vulnerability index, based on the composition of household livelihoods of the five livelihood capitals, was utilised to determine the livelihood vulnerability of Phelantaba households. In addition, participatory rural appraisal methods were applied in village focus groups to identify the coping strategies households relied upon to cope with climatic variability. Results illustrated that the most vulnerable households in Phelantaba village face the greatest livelihood vulnerability due to their poor access to physical capital and mimimal financial capital, coupled with their dependence on natural capital. Least vulnerable households faced lower vulnerability as they have good financial capacity and access to physical capital to respond to impacts of future climate change. Focus groups highlighted how households in Phelantaba do not have any specific coping strategies designed to address climatic variability. Rather, coping strategies to address poverty and economic stressors were indirectly applied to assist households to cope with climatic variability. In conclusion, the dissertation successfully conducted a site-specific assessment in Phelantaba village of the livelihood vulnerability households faced from future climate change. This research can assist policy makers to understand some of the key vulnerabilities rural households face at the local-level and begin to focus adaptation initiatives on the key areas of concern where they are needed most due to the impacts of future climate change.

This study focuses on rural livelihood diversification and improvement in dry districts of Zimbabwe during the period from 2000 to 2010. It establishes and documents livelihood activities and interventions in three semi-arid districts in Zimbabwe, analyses evidence for rural livelihood diversification and improvement and related challenges, and analyses institutional and policy issues that determine rural livelihood development in the politically charged period from 2000 to 2010. Rural livelihood diversification and improvement is not a recent phenomenon. For years, rural people have diversified their livelihoods for different economic reasons. Despite several studies on rural livelihoods in Zimbabwe, no similar studies have been done to determine the types of livelihood diversification that occur in a politically charged environment and whether they improve people‟s livelihoods. The study was guided by both the sustainable livelihoods framework and the actor oriented approach. Qualitative methodology was used for the overall data collection. Firstly data was collected „from the top‟ through in-depth interviews with officials from government institutions, non-governmental organisations and community leadership structures. Secondly data was collected „from the bottom up‟ through selected participatory methods in study areas. The overall study findings show that despite having increased livelihood interventions in all semi-arid areas, the politically fraught atmosphere constrained livelihood improvement and poverty remained. Although evidence for livelihood diversification is undisputed in the study, the extent to which it contributed to livelihood improvement was limited. The extended period of political constraint reversed some of the livelihood improvement gains recorded by external interventions. As most of the support was targeted at addressing the immediate food needs of the poor in semi-arid districts, this affected the number of long-term interventions targeted at sustainable livelihood development. The study found that the changing policies and institutional arrangements constrained and limited the potential of some of the livelihood strategies adopted during the period under study and as a result most livelihood activities were limited to survival strategies. The study shows that despite a decline in agricultural production during the period under study, it remained the major livelihood activity. Agricultural activities such as cotton and maize production and livestock rearing experienced a decline, but were partially revived through external support from both the government and nongovernmental organisations. Agriculture as a livelihood activity largely benefited from external interventions that rehabilitated irrigation infrastructure and the provision of agricultural inputs during the period. However, despite the dominance of agriculture as a livelihood activity in semi-arid areas non-farm livelihood activities, both locally initiated and externally fostered, played a significant role in supporting rural livelihoods. Poaching and wild fruit harvesting provided food for immediate consumption, whilst gold and diamond panning, wood carving and the commercialisation of non-timber forest products generated cash income for rural livelihoods. Non-farm external livelihood interventions identified resulted in a number of rural livelihood development models important for future rural development. These models were developed around the commercialisation of non-timber forest products for cash income generation, rural human capital development through vocational skills training and rural small livestock asset development. Human capital resulted in the development of rural industry in the form of community based enterprises. Indirectly it also contributed to migrant labour that sent cash and goods back home. The study shows that it is evident that in a politically charged environment livelihood diversification has a range of positive effects. The re-emergence of the barter exchange economy in rural communities contributed to livelihood diversification although sustainability was limited. It is also possible for both barter exchange and the cash market to co-exist in a politically charged environment. The study also shows that traditional leadership and local authorities in study areas became more politicised and militarised and this diverted them from facilitating and supporting rural development and inhibited rural livelihood development efforts by different rural players. The study found that rural livelihoods are not static, and they adapted as best they could in the face of exogenous trends and shocks. Rural areas underwent deep transformations as a result of political dynamics, local livelihood initiatives and external livelihood support. Rural livelihoods changed as rural people devised combined livelihood strategies that went beyond farming. However, in contrast to the widely accepted argument that diversification plays an important role in poverty alleviation, this was clearly not the case in Zimbabwe‟s politically charged environment. This study contributes to the development debate with a case study on the type and extent of livelihood diversification strategies possible in a politically charged environment. Methodologically the study contributes to the possible application of a dual data collection system where data is collected from the top using different methods from those used to collect data from the bottom. This enriched the data at triangulation phase during analysis. The study also contributes to the understanding of the political economy, the type of rural livelihood development possible in politically charged environments, and to how rural people in Zimbabwe react and behave in an endeavour to survive. There was an increased role played by external interventions in livelihood diversification but the extent of their contribution to positive livelihood outcomes was constrained by the politically charged environment that prompted the interventions in the first place. The normal processes of policy development and implementation changed as the role of politicians in planning and implementation became evident and policy aims shifted from rural development to political party self-preservation.

The purpose of the study was to measure the communication between farmers and the Agricultural Extension Service in British Columbia by analyzing the nature and number of contacts, as well as the relationship of such contacts to the socio-economic characteristics of farm operators. Two hypotheses were tested to ascertain whether there were any statistically significant differences in the level and kind of contact with District Agriculturists among farmers of varying socio-economic characteristics. The analytical survey method was used, and the data were collected by personal interviews with 256 farm household heads. The areas studied included Peace River, Northern Tier, North Thompson and Salmon Arm in rural British Columbia. In general, the respondents had similar characteristics to farm operators in other rural areas in the province. The respondents had a median of eight years of schooling, median net farm income of $2,000 to $2,999, and about one half of them had no off-farm jobs. Contacts between the respondents and the District Agriculturist were mainly through impersonal rather than personal sources of information, and the respondents reached by the two types of contact were not the same. The number of respondents who had personal contacts varied from 16 to 35 per cent, while the number obtaining information through the impersonal sources varied from 81 to 93 per cent, depending on the type of contact. The farmers had an average of 3.71 different types of contact during the year 1966. These included an average of 1.05 personal and 2.66 impersonal contacts. Farmers with higher socio-economic status reported more contacts than did lower status farmers. More personal contacts with the District Agriculturist were reported by farmers with more education. There were statistically significant differences between the users of all extension contacts and non-users, with respect to thirteen socio-economic characteristics. Four characteristics, including years of school completed, distance travelled for goods and services, social participation and amount of gross farm income, accounted for 34 per cent of the variation in the use of all types of extension contact combined. Between 13 and 27 per cent of the variation in each individual type of contact was accounted for by differing combinations of socio-economic characteristics. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

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Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze an ongoing project centered on satisfying basic clinical information needs of rural clinicians who work in hospitals without libraries or librarians by providing personal digital assistants (PDAs) equipped with clinical information databases augmented with full-text Loansome Doc delivery. Three projects have been instituted since 2006, in which 330 PDAs were distributed with training. Methods: This was a qualitative study that primarily involved individual interviews of participants in one of the three projects. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and themes were analyzed. The process continued until data saturation was achieved. Results: Much information has been discovered about the value of the services provided and what can be done to better address clinician information needs. Data collection is ongoing. Conclusions: Medical librarians, particularly those in academic centers, must reach out and find new ways to enable rural clinicians to stay current with the explosion of new biomedical information.

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During the last two years, the author in the course of fulfilling class requirements in the Department of Sociology made a series of investigations into the social, economic, and political aspects of several towns and villages in Utah and Idaho. As a result, an interest developed in the process of social change within the social structure. Therefore, as a thesis problem, a community study of a small Mormon village analyzing social change in the institutions and mores was selected.