Adapting to climate change in semi-arid rural areas: A case of the limpopo basin part of Botswana

Abstract

Climate change and anthropogenic pressure are increasingly modifying and interfering with ecosystem functions and limiting the delivery of ecosystem products, livelihoods, and adaptive response capacity in many developing countries. We identify measures by which local people in the semi-arid Limpopo Basin part of Botswana are responding to climate change and fluctuations in ecosystem products and examine socio-economic attributes of households influencing their adoption and discuss their adequacy. Our study used a case study of Bobirwa sub-district and employed key informant and household interviews to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used to analyze textural data from key informant interviews while frequencies, proportions, and Chi-squared tests were used to analyze the adoption of different strategies. A multinomial logit (MNL) regression was used to analyze the influence of several social, demographic, and economic attributes of households on household adaptation choices. We attributed the high adoption of on-farm adaptations to the simultaneous influence of more severe droughts and the free input support through the government’s Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture (ISPAAD). Our findings suggest that current adaptations were inadequate and implementation of the ISPAAD programme required fine-tuning to be more effective. Results of the MNL regression provide critical information on the barriers and enablers of adaptation in the sub-district yet offer important entry points for improving current adaptations. Therefore, the government needs to put measures that encourage investments in the processing of ecosystem products in rural areas to broaden the livelihood base and possibly reduce overdependence on rainfed agriculture. However, the extent to which this can be achieved depends on the level of government commitment to supporting local initiatives to addressing the climate change threat.