Determinants of households' livelihood diversification strategies to adapt to natural hazards: evidence from ecologically vulnerable haor region of Bangladesh

The haor region of Bangladesh is exposed to a variety of natural hazards such as flash floods, seasonal floods, droughts, riverbank erosion, embankment breach due to climate change, which impacts the haor people's lives and livelihoods. Haor households are attempting to diversify their livelihood activities to protect themselves from such extreme climate events. The study's aim to evaluate the various livelihood strategies adopted by haor households, and multinomial logistic regression is employed to identify the factors influencing their decision to pursue more eco-friendly and sustainable livelihood strategies. A multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was used to collect primary data from 300 haor households in Kishoreganj, Netrokona, and Sunamganj districts, with 100 from each district. We provide inimitable insight into the analysis to understand how livelihood resources, livelihood strategies, and livelihood outcomes are closely tied in the framework for sustainable rural livelihoods. The study classified a household's economic activities into five distinct categories, together with crop farming. Among the livelihood options, crop plus livestock rearing is the most productive livelihood strategy for haor households. The findings revealed that the household's head age and education, dependency ratio, land holdings, household assets value, access to credit, annual income, membership of any organization, home to road, market, and haor distances, communication during the dry season, duration of waterlogged, and agro-ecology of the haor ecosystem all have a significant impact on the choice of higher returning livelihood diversification strategies. Policies should attempt to promote the significant determinants of livelihood strategies choice, as well as should ensure livelihood assets, a strong infrastructure, and minimize natural hazards, in order to transform the local context and enable poor households to build more profitable livelihood strategies.

Automated summary

The study aims to evaluate the various livelihood strategies adopted by haor households and identifies the factors influencing their decision-making process. Through multinomial logistic regression, the study found that factors such as the household head's age, education, dependency ratio, land holdings, and access to credit significantly impact the choice of livelihood diversification strategies.