CIFOR–ICRAF publishes over 750 publications every year on agroforestry, forests and climate change, landscape restoration, rights, forest policy and much more – in multiple languages.

CIFOR–ICRAF addresses local challenges and opportunities while providing solutions to global problems for forests, landscapes, people and the planet.

We deliver actionable evidence and solutions to transform how land is used and how food is produced: conserving and restoring ecosystems, responding to the global climate, malnutrition, biodiversity and desertification crises. In short, improving people’s lives.

Coping with crisis - smoke, drought, flood and currency: Iban women and their households in West Kalimantan

Export citation

In recent years, rural households throughout Indonesia have faced a variety of crises, including severe drought, smoke from forest fires, and floods - all of which have affected subsistence farming. Simultaneous with these problems has been the wider Asian economic crisis that destabilized Indonesia both economically and politically. For rural people, it has affected cash-earning opportunities and prices of basic goods. Focusing on the Iban of West Kalimantan, this paper explores the impacts these various crises have had on Iban farming and wage labor, and how the Iban have coped. It touches on the successful strategies from the past as well as recent local developments that have appeared to cushion the continuing economic uncertainty. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the impact of climatic fluctuation and economic change on the livelihoods of local people in Southeast Asia and other parts of the Third World.
    Publication year

    2001

    Authors

    Wadley, R.L.

    Language

    English

    Keywords

    gender, tenure, livelihoods, ethnic groups, crises, economic crises, households, women, farming, labour

    Geographic

    Indonesia

Related publications