Coping with Multiple Stresses in Rural South Africa

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to investigate how local communities cope with and adapt to multiple stresses in rural semiarid South Africa. In semiarid regions water scarcity is one of a number of stresses that shape livelihood vulnerability. With climate change, it is predicted that rainfall in South Africa will become more uncertain and variable in the future, exposing more people to water insecurity. At the same time, the impacts of disease, a lack of institutional capacity, and limited livelihood opportunities can combine to limit adaptive capacity. Therefore, adaptation to changing climate should not be viewed in isolation but instead in the context of social, economic, and political conditions, all of which shape local community vulnerability and people's ability to cope with and adapt to change. This study uses a qualitative-quantitative-qualitative framework, including the use of a stated preference survey, to identify the drivers of agroecosystem change, to understand the capacity of households to cope with droughts, and to determine the ability of local institutions to respond to crises. The analysis suggests that the capacity of the agroecosystem to remain productive during droughts is decreasing, individual/household adaptive capacity remains low, and institutional capacity faces considerable barriers that prevent it from supporting households to adapt to multiple stresses. This research adds weight to the claim that vulnerability reflects multiple forces and processes, and that multiple stresses, that are agroecological, socioeconomic, and institutional in nature, need to be examined to understand vulnerability and to prevent maladaptation

Identifying drivers of household coping strategies to multiple climatic hazards in Western Uganda: implications for adapting to future climate change

“…Research into coping with multiple stresses has challenged perceptions about those most vulnerable to environmental stress, showing the need to consider those directly and indirectly affected (Hjerpe and Glaas 2011;Quinn et al 2011). If focuses on the socio-economic factors identified in this review as important for coping, such as livelihood activity and wealth, and how these factors shape the response to different hazards.…”

“…Earlier studies have examined slow-onset climatic hazards such as droughts (Roncoli et al 2001), as well as household responses to rapid-onset events such as floods (Motsholapheko et al 2011), showing the importance of shortterm labour switching, as well as longer term diversification. The majority of these studies focus on one stress, whilst a few have addressed strategies used to cope with multiple stresses (Osbahr et al 2008;Quinn et al 2011) with the latter remaining focused on the variety of strategies used. This paper provides empirical evidence that helps attribute preferred strategies to specific stresses, with a focus on understanding the factors that shape this choice of strategy.…”

Differential livelihood adaptation to social-ecological change in coastal Bangladesh

“…(Islam et al 2014), institutional (Quinn et al 2011) and psychological (Gifford 2011;Grothmann and Patt 2005). However, studies in this genre have generally considered barriers as having a uniform adverse effect on all actors, largely overlooking the particular nature and impact of such barriers on different actors (Mersha and Van Laerhoven 2016).…”

Crop modelling: towards locally relevant and climate-informed adaptation

“…Challenges facing crop modellers attempting to inform adaptation are detailed in Challinor et al (2018), to summarise: there is currently a limited model representation of the true dynamic adaptive management used by farmers (Quinn et al 2011); there is an inherent difficulty in the attribution of a yield change to an adaptation compared to a non-adapted control (Lobell 2014); and there is the responsibility for research to contribute to knowledge and address societal challenges (Lubchenco 1998). The agricultural model intercomparison project (AgMIP) has explicitly recognised the need Fig.…”