8. Climate Change and Food Insecurity: Institutional Barriers to Adaptation of Marginal Groups in the Far-Western Region of Nepal

Evidences show that climate change incidences affect adversely food security of marginal groups whose livelihoods are based on natural resources. The incidences are more harmful to their livelihood assets and strategies to achieve food resources because of both its higher sensitivity to the episodes and their lower adaptive capacity to the negative affects of the events. The preliminary finding from lead writer’s ongoing PhD research in the far western region of Nepal and authoresses long experiences in the field of climate change and food security of the country shows that the prevailing institutional barriers cause them highly vulnerable from the risks to secure their food need. This paper claims that both formal and informal economic, social and political institutional hurdles are the major reasons of reducing their capability which increase their vulnerability and limit the adaptive capacity to secure food in climate change variability and extreme events contexts. These institutional impediments in the contexts of Nepal, mostly, include the institutions of land tenure, market, caste and gender based occupation, wage labour, patron-client relations, schools and educations, settlement, untouchability and caste based discrimination, social networking, bargaining power, adaptation policies, and political engagement prevailing in rural area of the country. Therefore, the paper suggests that reformations of institutional barriers are essential for increasing the ability of such groups to resist impacts and adapt the negative impacts of the changes on production, access and consumption of food of marginal groups in sustainable away.