Seasonal security? The impact of climate seasonality on livelihood and well-being in Malawi

Hannah E. Furnas, Pennsylvania State University

The prerequisite to understanding a system’s vulnerability to climate change is to understand the system’s dependence on the climate. In Malawi, the seasonal nature of rain designates when harvest occurs, but also generates a hunger season. During this time, a number of social factors, particularly the persistent AIDS epidemic, may interact with seasonal variation to exacerbate hunger or poor health. Addressing dependency on seasonality in Malawi provides a case study for understanding how the human-environment interaction unfolds for a particularly vulnerable population. I use unique, longitudinal data from southern Malawi, Tsogolo la Thanzi, to ask how seasonality impacts food security, income, and self-rated health and how these relationships are exacerbated by rurality and perceptions of disease risk. The experience of climate seasonality in southern Malawi represents one form of reliance on climate. I find that experiencing the rainy season significantly predicts a decrease in healthy livelihoods and wellbeing.