AbstractHow does income uncertainty affect individual well‐being? Combining individual‐level panel data from rural Ethiopia with high‐resolution meteorological data, we estimate that mean‐preserving increases in rainfall variability are associated with reductions in objective consumption and subjective well‐being. Mediation analysis suggests that the estimated reduction in consumption does not fully explain the total effect on individual well‐being. Increased rainfall variability also has a large direct effect on individual well‐being.

AbstractBiodiversity decline in the tropics requires the implementation of comprehensive landscape management where agricultural systems are necessarily an integral element of biodiversity conservation. This study evaluates the potential for taxonomic biodiversity conservation within an intensive livestock-agricultural-forest mosaic landscape in Catacamas, Honduras. Tree sampling was performed in 448 plots set up within different forest and agricultural land uses: secondary forests, agroforestry coffee plantations, agriculture, pastures, live fences and riparian forest.

We use monthly municipality data for the period 2000-2015 in Guatemala and monthly district data for the period 1992-2019 in Costa Rica. We define relevant catchment areas using water flows to the population centers of the administrative units. Then, we calculate the precipitation inside and outside Pas within the relevant catchment areas, and test how the frequency of floods and landslides is affected by whether rain falls inside or outside PAs. We use a two-way fixed-effects panel data model. For Guatemala, we find no robust statistically significant effects on these types of disasters.

While much attention has been given to the effects of migration and remittances on agricultural activities in the communities of origin, the relationship between remittances and rural households' use of natural resources remains understudied. This paper contributes in filling this gap by using a Mexican data set that contains detailed information on both remittances and use of natural resources at the household level.

The status of genetic resource conservation in centers of crop diversity remains disputed. Recent case-study findings of persistent maize diversity in Yaxcaba, Yucatan, a municipality in southeast Mexico, have raised questions on earlier reports of widespread losses across the crop’s center of diversity in Mexico. We break down patterns in maize varietal richness in southeast Mexico to show that temporal trends in Yaxcaba are subsumed under spatial variation in this broader region and consistent with an overall loss of diversity.

Climate change could increase the frequency and duration of droughts that affect Mexico. This is particularly worrisome because many agricultural communities in the country are poor and with limited capacities for adaptation. This study estimated the impact of droughts on rural households’ wellbeing in Mexico, specifically on per capita earnings, poverty, and children’s school attendance. To do this, we focused our empirical analysis on the effects of the 2011 drought, one of the worst droughts that have affected Mexico in the past 70 years.

Global climate is changing rapidly, and it is not clear if agricultural producers in developing countries will be able to adapt fast enough in order to mitigate its negative effects. In order to be willing to take adaptation measures, farmers need to perceive that the climate is changing or could change, and they need to attribute enough weight to this perception to take action. During the last two decades, the literature that examines farmers’ perception of climate change has gained ground, but it is still scant.