Chasca Twyman

Evaluating Successful Livelihood Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change in Southern Africa

This paper examines the success of small-scale farming livelihoods in adapting to climate variability and change. We represent adaptation actions as choices within a response space that includes coping but also longer-term adaptation actions, and define success as those actions which promote system resilience, promote legitimate institutional change, and hence generate and sustain collective action. We explore data on social responses from four regions across South Africa and Mozambique facing a variety of climate risks. The analysis suggests that some collective adaptation actions enhance livelihood resilience to climate change and variability but others have negative spillover effects to other scales. Any assessment of successful adaptation is, however, constrained by the scale of analysis in terms of the temporal and spatial boundaries on the system being investigated. In addition, the diversity of mechanisms by which rural communities in southern Africa adapt to risks suggests that external interventions to assist adaptation will need to be sensitive to the location-specific nature of adaptation.

Climate Science, Development Practice, and Policy Interactions in Dryland Agroecological Systems

The literature on drought, livelihoods, and poverty suggests that dryland residents are especially vulnerable to climate change. However, assessing this vulnerability and sharing lessons between dryland communities on how to reduce vulnerability has proven difficult because of multiple definitions of vulnerability, complexities in quantification, and the temporal and spatial variability inherent in dryland agroecological systems. In this closing editorial, we review how we have addressed these challenges through a series of structured, multiscale, and interdisciplinary vulnerability assessment case studies from drylands in West Africa, southern Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia, and Latin America. These case studies adopt a common vulnerability framework but employ different approaches to measuring and assessing vulnerability. By comparing methods and results across these cases, we draw out the following key lessons: (1) Our studies show the utility of using consistent conceptual frameworks for vulnerability assessments even when quite different methodological approaches are taken; (2) Utilizing narratives and scenarios to capture the dynamics of dryland agroecological systems shows that vulnerability to climate change may depend more on access to financial, political, and institutional assets than to exposure to environmental change; (3) Our analysis shows that although the results of quantitative models seem authoritative, they may be treated too literally as predictions of the future by policy makers looking for evidence to support different strategies. In conclusion, we acknowledge there is a healthy tension between bottom-up/ qualitative/place-based approaches and top-down/quantitative/generalizable approaches, and we encourage researchers from different disciplines with different disciplinary languages, to talk, collaborate, and engage effectively with each other and with stakeholders at all levels.

Natural resource use and livelihoods in Botswana's Wildlife Management Areas☆

Abstract Global debates surrounding the management of natural resources in protected areas advocate greater involvement of local populations in order to maintain sustainable resource use and conserve biological diversity. For this involvement to be effective, and for development to be truly participatory, a deeper understanding of peoples relationships with the environment is needed. This paper explores the society–environment interactions of people in a newly established Wildlife Management Area in western Botswana, illustrating the complexity and diversity of resource use and livelihoods that must be addressed by development interventions.

Devising Appropriate Policies and Instruments in Support of Private Conservation Areas: Lessons Learned from the Klein Karoo, South Africa

The amount of privately conserved land is increasing worldwide. The potential of these areas to contribute to the global conservation of biodiversity is significant, given that statutory protected areas alone will not suffice. Nevertheless, there is still inadequate support for private conservation areas, and further research on appropriate, flexible, and generally applicable incentive measures is necessary. We conducted 25 semistructured interviews with the owners of private conservation areas in the Little Karoo, South Africa, to examine landowner opinions of existing conservation policies and their relationships with the local conservation authority. We also assessed landowner preferences regarding conservation incentive measures. Landowners doubted the conservation authoritys capacity to implement its stewardship program and were also discouraged by the bureaucracy of the program. The conservation authority was often viewed negatively, except where landowners had experienced personal contact from conservation staff or where strong social capital had formed among landowners. Landowners did not desire financial rewards for their conservation efforts, but sought recognition of their stewardship role and greater involvement from the conservation authority through personal contact. We conclude that conservation policies for private lands could benefit from the provision of extension services to landowners, promotion of formation of groups of landowners and other stakeholders, and public acknowledgment of the contributions private conservation areas make.

‘Where is the life in farming?’: The viability of smallholder farming on the margins of the Kalahari, Southern Africa

Abstract This paper investigates the ways in which national and regional policies relate to farming activities and concerns amongst the rural population in an area of southern Africa. The struggle to make a living through farming was a common theme to emerge from research about changing livelihoods in response to both variability in the environment and changes in policy. This local discourse echoed regional debates about land and agrarian reform in post-apartheid South Africa and the uncertain future of mixed farming in Botswana. It also raised broader questions about the viability of the future of small–medium-scale farming systems in rural areas in Africa, especially those within dynamic dryland environments such as the Kalahari. This paper looks specifically at the links between poverty and asset holding and aims to identify the ways in which people are or are not able to utilise or mobilise these assets in times of need. We argue that this can vary significantly between seemingly similar settlements, and similar households and that understanding this complexity is the key to recognising how future interventions many impact upon people’s lives. Too often, in the quest to produce understandings of poverty and livelihoods, the complexity, incongruity and reality of day-to-day practices are overlooked. Thus we seek to draw out the interactions between policy and natural resource use, and the capital asset changes involved in these interactions, which influence the sustainability of livelihoods and the differing levels of poverty and vulnerability.

Combating Land Degradation through Participatory Means: The Case of Swaziland

Abstract This paper examines a community grazing project to rehabilitate degraded land in Swaziland. Using data from interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups, we show that the ways in which participatory, decentralized approaches to natural resource management play out at the local level are closely linked to national-level power structures. The successes and issues that emerge at different stages of the grazing project reflect local socioeconomic priorities and show how people manage their time and labor according to household livelihood goals. However, the project favored the interests of cattle owners who were already the more socially and politically powerful members of the community. We argue that for participatory natural resource management to be more meaningful to communities, projects should focus on local ecological priorities, rather than addressing the environmental concerns that are rooted within existing dominant power structures. This requires change to social and political relationships across levels and the building of new institutions.

Soil degradation assessment in mixed farming systems of southern Africa: use of nutrient balance studies for participatory degradation monitoring

Soil degradation assessments for mixed farming systems of the Molopo Basin (North West Province, South Africa and Southern District, Botswana) are provided from farmer-based research, designed to quantify nutrient fluxes across the farming system and to analyze the social, economic, political and environmental factors affecting nutrient management practices. This paper discusses the practical difficulties of how to use participatory farmer-led studies to assess soil degradation extent and its causes, and of then disseminating this information to farming communities and policymakers. Nutrient balance studies show that land degradation is evident on arable fields as soil nutrient depletion (the main threat to poorer manure-reliant farmers) and soil acidification (the main threat to wealthier farmers who have become dependent on inorganic fertilizer additions). Integrated nutrient management strategies involving both compound fertilizer additions and regular manure inputs can mitigate most soil degradation even on the sandy infertile Kalahari soils, but remain infrequently practised. The need to retain nutrient flows through the livestock sector from rangeland to arable land is thus vital to environmental sustainability and offers an applicable entry point for agricultural development initiatives and support. Factors identified as threatening the flow of nutrients from rangelands to arable lands include policy settings in terms of the different support programmes offered to communal farmers, village-level extension advice, household poverty levels and labour constraints.

Hidden livelihoods? Natural resource-dependent livelihoods and urban development policy

Natural resources and their contribution to livelihoods have been widely explored within rural contexts yet have received relatively little attention within urban contexts. However, natural resources can contribute significantly, if modestly, to urban livelihoods in a number of often ‘hidden’ ways. This paper explores these ‘hidden’ livelihoods using livelihoods frameworks to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of urban-based natural resource-related livelihoods, drawing principally on examples from southern Africa. The aim of the paper is to provide a better appreciation of ways in which urban natural resources are used to support urban livelihoods; to enhance understanding of the systems that govern access or tenure over these resources; and to encourage creative and innovative thinking about urban livelihoods and options for urban development policy.

Toward a Conceptual Framework for Blending Social and Biophysical Attributes in Conservation Planning: A Case-Study of Privately-Conserved Lands

There has been increasing recognition within systematic conservation planning of the need to include social data alongside biophysical assessments. However, in the approaches to identify potential conservation sites, there remains much room for improvement in the treatment of social data. In particular, few rigorous methods to account for the diversity of less-easily quantifiable social attributes that influence the implementation success of conservation sites (such as willingness to conserve) have been developed. We use a case-study analysis of private conservation areas within the Little Karoo, South Africa, as a practical example of the importance of incorporating social data into the process of selecting potential conservation sites to improve their implementation likelihood. We draw on extensive data on the social attributes of our case study obtained from a combination of survey questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. We discuss the need to determine the social attributes that are important for achieving the chosen implementation strategy by offering four tested examples of important social attributes in the Little Karoo: the willingness of landowners to take part in a stewardship arrangement, their willingness to conserve, their capacity to conserve, and the social capital among private conservation area owners. We then discuss the process of using an implementation likelihood ratio (derived from a combined measure of the social attributes) to assist the choice of potential conservation sites. We conclude by summarizing our discussion into a simple conceptual framework for identifying biophysically-valuable sites which possess a high likelihood that the desired implementation strategy will be realized on them.

Community fencing in open rangelands: self‐empowerment in Eastern Namibia

This article examines the cross‐cutting debates of empowerment, vulnerability, sustainability and livelihoods within the local and global contexts relevant to the people of Okonyoka, a settlement of less than 150 people situated in the heart of Eastern Namibias southern communal lands. Here, people are adapting their livelihoods flexibly in response to both environmental natural resource variability and to changes in social institutions and land use policies. Drought‐coping strategies, privatisation of the range through fencing and changes to social networks, all have both positive and negative impacts on peoples everyday lives. Okonyoka is the first settlement to erect a community fence in Eastern Namibias southern communal area, but surrounding settlements are impressed with the positive environmental and societal results and are planning to follow suit. Such fences can, however, inhibit neighbouring peoples livihoods, particularly the poor or socially excluded, and can change long‐standing regional drought‐coping strategies. Though the policy context is dynamic and changing, such moves have the potential to radically change the landscape of communal areas.