Journal of Environmental & Earth Sciences

Home Gardens into Climate Resilience Strategies: Insights from Tribal Communities in Keonjhar, Odisha

Shusrisangeeta Das — 2025-06-23

Home gardens serve as a crucial adaptation strategy for tribal communities in Keonjhar district, Odisha, enhancing food security, income generation, and climate resilience. This study examines the role of home gardens in sustaining tribal livelihoods while addressing challenges such as climate variability, soil degradation, and market constraints. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, it integrates the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) and socio-ecological resilience theory. Data from 120 tribal households across four villages in Banspal block were collected through structured interviews and focus group discussions. A key innovation lies in integrating indigenous knowledge systems with the Problem Facing Index (PFI) methodology to generate quantified, community-driven insights on climate adaptation barriers. Findings reveal that home gardens contribute around ₹10,000 per season to household income, reducing market dependency by over 70% during crises such as the COVID-19 lockdown. Over 75% of households face high to medium challenges due to climate variability (PFI = 252), soil degradation (PFI = 251), and wildlife intrusions (PFI = 250). Other notable constraints include pests (75%) and poor market access (61.7%). Although 82.5% reported no issue with agricultural inputs, water scarcity remains a seasonal concern for 23%. Despite constraints, home gardens were found to enhance all five SLF capitals: natural, human, social, financial, and physical. The study recommends context-sensitive interventions, including seed distribution, organic inputs, weather-based advisories, and strengthened institutional support. It highlights the potential for scaling home garden models across other marginalized agroecological regions in India and Asia, aligning them with national rural development and climate adaptation programs.

Assessing the Convergence of Cropland Ecological Balance: A Panel Data Analysis of 13 Major Agricultural Countries

Orhan Şimşek — 2025-06-24

This study investigates the convergence hypothesis and stochastic dynamics of agricultural land use and ecological balance across 13 major agricultural countries from 1992 to 2022. The study's concentrated samples are Russia, the United States, the Netherlands, Brazil, Germany, China, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Indonesia, and India. The research uncovers notable variations in ecological balance by utilizing a comprehensive set of advanced panel unit root tests (Panel CIPS, CADF, Panel-LM, Panel-KPSS, and Bahmani-Oskooee et al.’s Panel KPSS Unit Root Test). The findings highlight significant improvements in Canada, contrasting with declines in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the United States. The results indicate convergence in ecological balance among these countries, suggesting that agricultural practices are progressively aligning with sustainability objectives. The considered countries can determine and enact joint and collective policy actions addressing cropland sustainability. However, the univariate outcome also shows that the cropland ecological balance of Germany, China, France, Indonesia, and India does contain a unit root and stationary which means the presence of the constant-mean. The univariate actions from the mentioned governments will not promote persistent impact. Therefore, joint actions determined by the countries considered are recommended for the mentioned countries. However, the rest of the countries also enact local policies. The insights gained are critical for informing global sustainability strategies and aiding policymakers in developing effective measures to enhance agricultural practices and mitigate environmental impacts. This research provides a data-driven foundation for optimizing agricultural sustainability and supports international efforts to achieve long-term ecological stability.