Sara Brogaard
Senior Lecturer
Living without buffers-illustrating climate vulnerability in the Lake Victoria basin
Author
Summary, in English
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.
Department/s
- LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
Publishing year
2013
Language
English
Pages
143-157
Publication/Series
Sustainability Science
Volume
8
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Keywords
- Climate vulnerability
- Exposure
- Sensitivity
- Differential adaptive
- capacity
- Smallholder farmers
- Lake Victoria Basin
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1862-4057