World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 90

Constructing a Database for Food Security Assessments in Southeast Asia

resources.
Environmental
income
derives from the extraction of natural
resources including fishing, hunting, and
collecting.

In terms of income poverty,
excluding
environmental
income
would increase the headcount ratio of
the whole sample from 33% to 53%
(Table 2). The most affected would
be the households in cluster 2 since
their livelihood activities depend more
on environmental extraction; their
headcount ratio increases from 30%
to 69%. In contrast, households from
cluster 1 would be relatively less affected
(increase from 39% to 55%). Similarly,
in terms of consumption poverty, if

we exclude the natural resources used
for home consumption, the overall
headcount ratio changes from 27% to
40%. However, in this case the headcount
ratio would be larger for households in
cluster 1 than 2. Overall, this example
shows that environmental income is a
major component of poverty reduction
and food security and environmental
degradation a major threat.

With respect to the FCS, it can be
seen from Table 3 that natural resources
contribute quite a lot to the high values
of the FCS, e.g., in terms of fish, meat,
or vegetable. Again, if we exclude the
contribution of natural resources, the
FCS decreases significantly.

Table 3: FCS with and without natural resources in Cambodia (2013)
Livelihood clusters
1

2

3

Whole
sample

Staples

13.9

13.9

14.0

14.0

Roots

0.4

0.7

0.9

0.6

Pulses

2.8

4.0

4.9

3.8

Fruits

2.6

3.5

3.2

3.1

Vegetable

5.1

5.3

5.4

5.3

Fish

22.3

23.5

22.0

22.6

Meat

5.4

6.2

8.9

6.7

Eggs

4.4

3.4

6.0

4.6

Milk

0.3

0.2

1.2

0.5

Oil

1.7

1.8

2.0

1.8

Sugar

2.9

2.8

3.0

2.9

FCS with natural resources

61.8

65.5

71.6

65.9

FCS without natural resources

46.9

41.4

61.7

49.6

Food item

Note: definition of clusters: cluster 1: farming and low-skilled jobs; cluster 2: farming and environmental extraction; cluster 3: farming and self-employment or high-skilled jobs.
Source: based on Nguyen et al. (2015)

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