Search Results (2)

The United Nations and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deem many regions of southern Africa as vulnerable landscapes due to changing climatic regimes, ecological conditions, and low adaptive capacity. Typically in highly vulnerable regions, multiple livelihood strategies are employed to enable sustainable development. In Botswana, livelihood strategies have diversified over time to include tourism and other non-agricultural activities. While such diversification and development have been studied, little is known about how locals perceive livelihood risks. This article analyzes perceptions of risk through a risk hazards framework. During the summer of 2010, 330 surveys were completed within seven villages in northern Botswana and the Caprivi Strip of Namibia. During the survey respondents were asked to list the biggest threats/challenges to their livelihoods. Responses were grouped into categories of risk according to the capital assets on which livelihoods depend: natural, physical, financial, human, and social. A risk mapping procedure was utilized, for which indices of severity, incidence, and risk were calculated. It is hypothesized that people’s perception of risk is directly dependent on environmental conditions and employment status of the household. Results indicate that problems related to natural and financial assets are the greatest source of risk to livelihoods. Furthermore, flood, drought, and other measures of climate variability are perceived as influential, typically negatively, to livelihood strategies. Full article

Worldwide the search is on for sustainable solutions to the competing needs for forest conservation and agricultural development. A strategy with contemporary salience arises in intensive, sedentarized agriculture that can protect forests and enhance livelihoods for forest dwellers. This paper investigates why intensive agriculture does not limit deforestation in southeastern Mexico’s Calakmul Municipality. It argues that agriculture faces challenges from a range of biophysical and socioeconomic factors in tropical regions and that this encourages expanded land use for intensive farmers. Full article