CHAPTER ONE

1.1 Background of the Study

The oxford dictionary defines livelihood as the means of securing the basic necessities food, water, shelter and clothing of life. Livelihood defines as a set of activities involving securing water, food, fodder, medicine, shelter, clothing and the capacity to acquire above necessities working either individually or as a group by using endowments (both human and materials) for meeting the requirement of the self household on a sustainable basis with dignity. The activities are usually carried out repeatedly. (Oxford dictionary, 2001)

In social sciences the concept of livelihood extends to include social and cultural means. That is to say “The command an individual, farming or other social groups has over an income and/ or bundles of resources that can be used or exchanged to satisfy it needs. This may involve information’s cultural knowledge social networks and legal rights as well as tools and other resources. (Blaikie P., Cannon T, et al, 2004).

The concept of livelihood is used in the field such as ecology, political and aspects of human geography in research that focuses on sustainability and human right. One of the major areas of population environment research in the past decade has focused on household level population dynamics and their relationship through livelihood strategies, to environmental changes, particularly in rural areas of the developing world. Studies have sought to go beyond the attribution of environmental degradation to high fertility and associated with population increase. Instead, they have investigated the relationship among population variables (household size, age and sex composition, fertility on farm population density, migration and mortality), biophysical variables (forest cover, coastal mangroves and soil quality), and natural resources (firewood, timbers, non-timbers forest products, bush meat and water). In the Amazon basin, central America, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Oceania and Africa. (Wlker and Homma).

Product activities are those that generates cash and non cash income activities such as agriculture, wage labor, or craft production that “put food on the table” and generates potentially tradable goods and services. Reproductive activities are activities that guarantee the survival of the productive units, which is household maintenance function such as child care cooking and cleaning. (sousan et al).

Thus for instance, Birdsall (1988) in her review on economic approaches to population growth cities, several studies that find that men and women expresses different target for total fertility and the more educated is the men the more effective he is able to bargain with household so that fertility outcome are closer to his preference. Similarly, Strauses and Thomas (1995) in their survey in literature find that additional income in hands of the mother is likely to lead to significantly larger increase in children nutrition and education than a similar increase in income in the hands of the father.

Recent meta- analysis of deforestation (Geist and Lambiun, 2001) desertification (Geist and Lambin, 2004), an agriculture intensification (Keys and Mc Connell,2005)to sought to synthesize case study findings and uncover regional patterns of proximate and driving forces for each of the phenomena studied. For this paper we are able to employ the same method because the variety of demographics phenomena examined (fertility, mobility, and migration) and the variety of natural resources affected (forest, methods and agricultural systems) mitigates against common metrics. Never the less, we have confirmed or denied certain hypothesis.

It should be noted VCMs have been criticized as being oversimplified and as blaming the victims rather than examining deeper political, economical and institutional imbalance that set the context for environmental degradation (Forsyth et al., 1998, Krings, 2002; Gray and Moseley, 2005). A political economy perspective is indeed important for research on fertility livelihood environment linkage, but for the purposes of this brief review we will focus on the evidence of linkage between household level fertility behavior and the quantity and quality of environmental resources rather than on what might be termed underlying causes:

Ultimately the focus of research into household life cycles and environment must expand to cover varied social and cultural context which clearly modifies the relationship between household composition and environmental impact, for example a closer look at life cycle issues within latin Americans indigenous community has important policy implications. This is because indigenous population appears to be growing much faster and is correspondingly younger than their non-indigenous rural counterpart. (McSweeeney and Arps, 2005).

This implies that present and future indigenous landscapes are likely to be dominated by the imprint of youthful households. A better understanding of why despites the high and growing population densities, long settled indigenous household are found to be associated with much lower per capita rates of deforestation than non indigenous settles. (Encarta Premium )

In the past indigenous people light ecological footprint was explained by their low population density relatively low rates of market integration, and simple technologies. New data are showing that even when these conditions change, indigenous people can still be effective forest and resources. (Zimmerman et al., 2001; and Guzman et al., 2003).

1.2 Problem Definition

This research work is aimed to answer the following question, base on my research area Damakasuwa District of kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

        i.            What kind of economic activities does the man engage in sustaining their livelihood?

      ii.            What is the number of men involved in the various activities?

    iii.            Where are the various activity located in the area?

    iv.            How much time did they spend on each activity carried out?

      v.            What are the socio economic activities of men involved in the activities in the area?

    vi.            What are the challenges they face in the activities?

1.3 Aim

       The aim of this study is to analyze the livelihood of men living in Damakasuwa of Kauru Local Government Area.

1.3.2 Objectives

To achieve the aim of the research the followings objective are:

            i.            To find out the socio-demographic characteristics of the rural men that undertakes the activities.

          ii.            To find out where the men undertake their activities in sustaining their livelihood.

        iii.            To find out the economic activities of men in Damakasuwa District of Kauru Local Government Area.

        iv.             To find out what are the problems they encountered.

          v.            To proffer possible solution to the problems that they are facing.

1.4Scope

The scope of this study is restricted to Damakasuwa District, of Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The study will encompass the analysis of livelihood of men in Damakasuwa District and effort made by community, Local Government and even the state of the study Area to in increase a greater livelihood of men in the study Area.

1.5Justification

This research is restricted to only men living in DamakasuwaDistrict and they kind of activities they engage in Damakasuwa District of Kauru Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

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