Living without buffers—illustrating climate vulnerability in the Lake Victoria basin

Abstract

Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are essential, albeit theoretically vague, components of climate vulnerability. This has triggered debate surrounding how these factors can be translated into, and understood in, an empirical context subject to present and future harm. In this article, which draws on extensive fieldwork in the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya and Tanzania, we illustrate how exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity play out in the context of climate vulnerability and discuss how they interact in situ. Using a mixed methods approach including survey data, rainfall data and a suite of participatory methods, such as focus groups and interactive mapping of seasonal calendars, we identify how climate-induced stressors affect smallholder farmers' well-being and natural resources. Drawing on the seasonal calendar as a heuristic, and climate vulnerability terminology, we illustrate when, where and how these climate-induced stressors converge to constrain farmers' livelihoods. Our analysis indicates that farmers in the basin face a highly uncertain future with discernible, but differentiated, adaptation deficits due to recurring, and potentially worsening, patterns of hardship.

What about Gender in Climate Change? Twelve Feminist Lessons from Development

“…Inspiration for the article springs from three sources. First, sustainability science research on human-environmental conditions for food security, improved health and gender equality in sub-Saharan small-scale agriculture [6][7][8]11]. Second, feminist ideas in the three development debates on 'gendering development' [23], 'mainstreaming gender' [24] and 'stand-alone goals for gender equality' [25].…”

“…Even fewer studies have examined how climate change is experienced in the context of poverty and gender inequality in exposed settings in rainfed small-scale agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, which is the dominant form of livelihood for the majority of populations there [5]. Research in sustainability science has contributed to identify aspects that are vital for understanding the conditions and scope for climate change adaptation, gender equality and poverty alleviation in this region [6][7][8]. As one fundamental aspect of this, the food and health imperatives imply that small-scale farmers strive to secure food while fending off multiple threats to their health [6][7][8].…”

“…Research in sustainability science has contributed to identify aspects that are vital for understanding the conditions and scope for climate change adaptation, gender equality and poverty alleviation in this region [6][7][8]. As one fundamental aspect of this, the food and health imperatives imply that small-scale farmers strive to secure food while fending off multiple threats to their health [6][7][8]. As another vital aspect, the gender imperative refers to how gender as a profound social relation manifests itself in the regulation and use of labor, land and also marital love [9].…”

“…Gender regimes thus entail institutions that determine how resources are accessed, distributed and consumed, how labor is coded, recoded and divided into both productive and reproductive tasks and how social practices and responsibilities are discursively defined and fulfilled. Taken together the three imperatives of food, health and gender, influence how farmers will perceive risk, prioritize tasks in everyday farming, experience and share hardship, and shape aspirations for future livelihoods [6][7][8]. In all, the imperatives affect farmers' adaptation and mitigation space and should be core to serious climate change responses or development initiatives [11].…”

“Credit plus” microcredit schemes: a key to women's adaptive capacity

“…Climate models for Eastern Africa (IPCC, 2007) and for Lake Victoria basin (Gabrielsson et al, 2012) present diverging scenarios but concur on the higher incidence of extreme weather events.…”