Abstract In drought-prone Southern Africa, rural livelihoods face multiple shocks and stresses, particularly due to climate change, often resulting in impoverishment. However, household climate adaptations are not always conducive to poverty escapes. This article seeks to explore this discrepancy by examining livelihood diversification as a means for households to achieve the ‘dual outcomes’ of poverty reduction alongside climate adaptation. The study employs an existing rural qualitative data set in Shangombo District in Western Province, Zambia, consisting of life history interviews from 2019 and 2023. ‘Dual-outcome’ respondents demonstrated absorptive capacity, including through livestock accumulation and food production, alongside adaptive capacity built primarily through formal education and diversified livelihoods and assets. Women respondents’ disparities in risk exposure and structural barriers limited their opportunities to build these capacities. Moreover, while adaptive capacity enabled households to make strategic choices, this component of development resilience manifested in some cases as maladaptation across spatial and temporal scales, jeopardising longer-term climate resilience.
Keywords climate adaptation, maladaptation, poverty, resilience, diversification, smallholder farmer.
The disproportionate impact of climate change on the most underserved and vulnerable communities, particularly those reliant on subsistence agriculture, is a critical priority for development research and practice (IPCC 2023). For communities in which consumption needs and livelihoods are highly dependent on natural resources, vulnerability to climate shocks often overlaps with vulnerability to impoverishment (Shepherd et al. 2022).
To navigate these constraints, livelihood diversification has been cited as a means to address both climate adaptation and poverty reduction in much of sub-Saharan Africa (Arslan et al. 2018; Musumba et al. 2022). Through livelihood diversification, poverty reduction can create a conducive environment for autonomous adaptation (Tuihedur Rahman et al. 2021), and climate-adaptive diversified livelihood portfolios can buffer households from climate shocks (Eriksen et al. 2007), or even promote the regeneration of critical natural resources which can increase income generation (Veste et al. 2024). Household poverty reduction and climate adaptation can thus form a virtuous cycle, which positions programmes targeting these co-benefits as a high-impact investment for national governments and international stakeholders alike.
However, the emergence of this virtuous cycle cannot be assumed. In some cases, actions targeting one type of vulnerability may exacerbate the other, such as extractive livelihoods supporting household consumption yet being maladaptive over time (Ngoma et al. 2021b). This tension highlights the need for research on context-specific trade‑offs that may emerge between poverty reduction and climate adaptation, and the importance of integrated approaches which facilitate co-benefits.
To explore these possible synergies and trade-offs, this article investigates how livelihood diversification can enable the achievement of both poverty reduction and climate adaptation among rural households in Southern Africa, and where tensions may offset the creation of a virtuous cycle. It analyses qualitative data comprising 26 life history interviews (LHIs) carried out by the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network with its partners, conducted in rural Shangombo District in the Western Province of Zambia in 2019 and 2023. Study findings highlight the roles of absorptive capacity, predominantly built through accumulating savings and livestock and continued food production, as well as adaptive capacity, most notably built through formal education and highly diversified livelihoods and assets, in achieving dual outcomes. However, disparities in exposure to idiosyncratic risks and structural inequities facing women respondents limited their achievement of dual outcomes. Findings also indicate how respondents with high development resilience may make livelihood choices prioritising short-term welfare over longer-term climate resilience.
This article will proceed as follows. Section 2 presents the evidence on the drivers of poverty reduction and climate adaptation through livelihood diversification in rural Southern African households, culminating in a conceptual framework linking these outcomes. Section 3 introduces the qualitative data set analysed in Section 4, and Section 5 concludes.
Livelihood diversification has long been cited as a means to reduce monetary poverty, particularly in shock-prone rural contexts (Chonabayashi, Jithitikulchai and Qu 2020; Dumenu and Takam Tiamgne 2020). This is primarily achieved through reduced risk exposure. If livelihood portfolios are sufficiently diversified in the inputs on which each livelihood is dependent, households can use alternate income sources to smooth consumption despite shocks and stresses facing other livelihoods (Barrett, Reardon and Webb 2001). By reducing vulnerability to impoverishment, diversification has been cited as a means of strengthening household resilience (Chonabayashi et al. 2020; O’Brien et al. 2008), defined in this study as capacities which prevent households from experiencing a downturn of development outcomes as a result of shocks and stresses, and therefore framed in opposition to vulnerability (Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai 2014).
The scope of this article will encompass two resilience components in particular: absorptive and adaptive capacities, as conceptualised by Béné, Frankenberger and Nelson (2015) and Béné et al. (2012). Absorptive capacity encompasses strategies to mitigate risks and accommodate the impact of shocks to support rapid recovery, while adaptive capacity consists of households’ ability to take informed, proactive choices following shocks (Béné et al. 2015). However, households’ livelihood strategies to prevent impoverishment, indicating high development resilience, may be at odds with longer-term climate resilience. Farming in wetlands and waterways, for instance, supports households to cope with decreasing agricultural yields, but contributes to soil erosion and increases their community’s vulnerability to flash floods (Vincent et al. 2013). Dilling et al. (2015) distinguish these household strategies to cope with climate variability, which may be maladaptive across spatial and temporal scales, from true adaptation to climate change.
To enable true adaptation through reduced monetary poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, evidence centres predominantly on the roles of access to financial and human capital. Financial capital plays a dual role of supporting the purchase of key livelihood inputs and building a safety net with which households can buffer against shocks (Ngoma, Finn and Kabisa 2023; Ulrichs, Slater and Costella 2019). The use of assets as a buffer, which is a key function of absorptive capacity, can also support higher-risk tolerance among smallholders (Dercon and Christiaensen 2011). Emerging findings in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrate how asset ownership and formal risk transfer through indexed insurance improves risk tolerance for climate-adaptive actions among smallholders (Haile, Nillesen and Tirivayi 2020; Hansen et al. 2019; Musumba et al. 2022).
Furthermore, increased liquidity and reduced monetary poverty provide an enabling environment for educational attainment, by providing households the means to cover the direct and indirect costs of schooling (Glick 2008). Enabling educational attainment is critical to address the knowledge-intensiveness of climate adaptations, which is frequently cited as a barrier for smallholders, particularly among women (Call and Sellers 2019; Rahut, Aryal and Marenya 2021). Indeed, gendered disparities in educational attainment and access to productive assets in rural Zambia play a critical role in household resilience more broadly (Ngoma et al. 2023), posing additional obstacles for women seeking climate adaptation through poverty reduction.
Evidence of the reversed pathway of influence, through which climate adaptations support household welfare, is relatively limited in Southern Africa. However, evidence synthesised globally indicates that climate adaptation lowers households’ exposure to climate risks and consequently reduces their income variability and their need for maladaptive coping (Hansen et al. 2019). Farm-based adaptations reduce reliance on the same natural resources, particularly water and soil nutrients; for instance, in Zambia, crop diversification was demonstrated to reduce poverty incidence in the face of drought and floods (Alfani et al. 2021; Chonabayashi et al. 2020). Non-farm diversification, which moves rural households away from exclusively relying on climate shockprone livelihoods, also mitigates climate risk exposure, evidenced by the income-smoothing effect of non-farm livelihoods during Zambia’s 2015 drought (Alfani et al. 2021). In the longer-term, evidence from rural Southern Africa demonstrates how climate adaptations, particularly farm-based adaptations such as agroforestry, can support the regeneration of critical resources, such as soil nutrition (Veste et al. 2024), which can improve livelihood options accessible to households.
Despite the enabling factors above, poverty reduction or climate adaptation also have the potential to jeopardise one another. In Malawi, Hansen et al. (2019) found that drought-resistant maize, a means of climate adaptation, can have yield penalties in climactically good years, which limits households’ ability to reduce poverty in the face of highly variable climate indicators. Conversely, households can diversify into extractive livelihoods to improve their welfare, such as Zambian farmers extending cropland into forests (Ngoma et al. 2021a).
This tension between development resilience and climate resilience has rarely been addressed in the literature, with limited application to rural households in drought-prone Southern Africa. This article seeks to fill this gap by developing a conceptual framework, depicted in Figure 1, which explicitly examines the role of resilience capacities in mediating bidirectionality between poverty reduction and climate adaptation. Key factors in the relationship between reduced monetary poverty and climate adaptation are depicted below. In such a shock-prone context, risk and resilience are key components of household decision-making. Consequently, absorptive and adaptive resilience capacities put forth by Béné et al. (2012) are featured in Figure 1, mediating bidirectional influences between poverty reduction and climate adaptation.
Figure 1
Source: Author's own.
Both pathways from poverty reduction to climate adaptation begin with increased liquidity, supporting building financial capital and investments in human capital such as higher educational attainment. Path 1 charts how increased liquidity can support the accumulation of assets, such as savings or livestock, which strengthens the absorptive capacity of households. With a stronger buffer against shocks, these households are more tolerant of taking (calculated) risks, which are inherent to climate adaptation (Hansen et al. 2019). Path 2 involves increased investment in human capital in the form of education or skills training. This builds adaptive capacity, supporting households to take up risk management strategies and tolerate the risks required for climate-adaptative livelihood decisions.
The remaining pathways begin with climate adaptation as a product of diversification, such as intercropping or starting a non‑farm enterprise. Path 3 posits that by reducing reliance on natural resources, depleted natural capitals can regenerate, thereby improving yields and/or broadening the livelihood options available for rural households. Path 4 consists of diversifying risks in household portfolios, thus reducing climate shock exposure and improving absorptive capacity to prevent impoverishment.
This study employs a data set of rural households in Shangombo District of Western Province in Zambia, collected by the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN) with its partners: Zambart Research (phase 1) and the Centre for Economic and Social Research (phase 2). The data set received ethical approval from the University of Zambia Biomedical Research Ethics Committee. Western Province experiences heightened exposure to climate change (Ngoma et al. 2023), with a high poverty rate of 78.6 per cent using the national poverty line (ZamStats 2023). The data set analysed for this article comprises 26 LHIs, consisting of 16 from the first phase in 2019 and ten interviews in 2023. Semi‑structured interview guides were employed, conducted by a pair of senior and junior researchers paired by gender. Anonymised interview transcriptions were shared for the purposes of this article.
Thematic analysis was undertaken on LHI transcripts using a priori codes, and attributes such as respondents’ gender, poverty trajectories, and adaptation status were added to interviews to allow for cross-tabulation. Poverty status was identified in transcripts based on wellbeing categories determined by focus group discussions conducted in each of CPAN’s study sites. Poverty trajectories, as defined in Table 1, were established based on historical wellbeing.
Though the interview tools were constructed to determine poverty trends and dynamics more broadly, the salience of climate shocks faced by respondents provided rich enough data from which to draw some conclusions through thematic analysis. Attrition, common among many longitudinal studies, was a key limitation. Attrition was most common among respondents in chronic poverty, with eight (5F) out of 11 phase 1 respondents not reinterviewed in 2023, as well as both transitory escapers (2F), in comparison to only one escaper who was interviewed in 2019 but not accessible during the study’s follow-up. Overall, this means that of the 26 LHIs, five were reinterviewed in both phases, while 21 individual respondents in total were interviewed across the two phases. This study is not intended to be representative but rather offers a deep dive into the relationship between climate resilience and poverty reduction in a highly vulnerable context. Study findings should be further contextualised within larger cross-provincial data sets and mixed-methods analyses on these topics in Zambia (e.g. Shepherd et al., this IDS Bulletin). With this in mind, the article also situates its results within the broader literature on poverty and climate resilience in Zambia.
The intersecting issues of high household poverty incidence, natural resource degradation, and high livelihood exposure to climate shocks emerged strongly across the LHIs. Despite the high prevalence of diversified portfolios, poverty rates remained high, with only seven of 21 individuals considered non-poor in their latest interviews. Climate adaptations were also common among respondents, the majority of which were sustained. Among the seven poverty escapers, all but one had adopted climate adaptations of their livelihoods.
Women represented a far lower number of sustained or late escapers, and only six of eleven women had participated in climate-adapted livelihoods, in comparison to eight of ten men. Only two female respondents were present in the data set among the subset of late or sustained escaper cohort of seven respondents. Both transitory escapers are women who diversified into climate-adapted livelihoods (non-farm enterprises) to combat their rapid poverty descents following separation from their husbands. Their life histories highlight the precarity of women’s welfare when social norms prevent their asset ownership and control (Ngoma et al. 2023).
The sections that follow are structured around the key conceptual pathways presented in Figure 1. They will focus primarily on respondents who have achieved both outcomes of interest: reduced household poverty and sustained climate adaptation. Contrasts will also be drawn with respondents who were less successful in these outcomes, to better elucidate the roles of livelihood capitals, risk, and resilience in influencing pathways between climate and poverty outcomes.
4.1 Paths 1 and 2: how can poverty reduction, achieved through diversified livelihoods, also support climate adaptation?
The pathway from reduced household poverty to adopting and sustaining climate adaptations among respondents, as illustrated in Figure 1, relied primarily on financial and human capital, particularly as they interconnect with risk tolerance and risk management.
4.1.1 Financial capital as buffer against risk
Financial capital and liquidity were a critical step towards improved household welfare leading to adopting climate adaptations. This finding relates not only to the purchase of climate-adaptive inputs, but to its upkeep; James3 (SE, man, 68), for instance, purchased an irrigation pump but despite his status as a sustained escaper, did not have the liquidity to repair it when it faced a mechanical issue in 2023. Hence, accumulating savings was particularly important to promote adaptation, with nearly all respondents in the escaper group accumulating savings and other assets, predominantly livestock. Some poverty escapers even cited owning formal bank accounts and mobile bank accounts.
Savings from natural resource-based livelihoods were leveraged by respondents during periods of increasing welfare as seed capital towards livelihoods with less natural resource dependency, or to support off-farm adaptation. For instance, Anthony (LE, man, 49) used savings from high yields of maize to invest in a plough for his own fields, which he subsequently rented to other farmers, the profits from which supported the purchase of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser. Similarly, Faith (TE, woman, 52) used profits from her fish sales to invest in a storefront to sell groceries and secondhand clothing.
After increasing their assets, households who escaped poverty were more likely to invest in higher-risk higher-reward strategies. This calculated form of risk tolerance is important, given its possible role as an enabler of climate adaptation (Haile et al. 2020; Hansen et al. 2019). Escapers’ risk tolerance was demonstrated through various livelihood strategies, including two escapers’ risky crop diversification after a season of high yields. Crop diversification is considered climate adaptation as it can regenerate soil, and since different crops are theoretically sensitive to different shocks (Vincent et al. 2013). However, it can be risky when diversifying into rainfed horticultural plants due to their higher watering requirements (Labeyrie et al. 2021). Consequently, attempts by two escaper households to grow tomatoes, onion, and okra in their rainfed fields elicited very low yields. However, by building up savings and alternate livelihoods, these unsuccessful adaptation attempts did not result in poverty descents.
In contrast, chronically poor households had few opportunities to strengthen their absorptive capacities beyond state-funded support such as food aid, social cash transfers, subsidised health‑care services, or resorting to begging from neighbours. Their absorptive capacity was consequently not sufficient to support capital-intensive livelihood investments, or even to tolerate the inherent risks associated with climate adaptation and livelihood diversification. As a result, chronically poor households engaged in reactive diversification, often into livelihoods that continued their reliance on natural resources, such as fishing or beekeeping. While these may supplement consumption or even enable commercial sales for a period, these livelihoods remain at risk from rainfall variability and drought, albeit less directly. Beatrice (woman, 58), a respondent in chronic poverty, explains how lack of liquidity can result in diversification that is neither climate-adaptive nor poverty reducing:
We cannot escape poverty because we have no money; we farm but because of drought we do not harvest enough. My husband had over 80 drums [beehives] but there are no bees because of the drought, there are no flowers so the bees cannot occupy the drums; they run away. We try gardening but we do not grow much to be able to sell.
By diversifying to livelihoods that were also reliant on water availability, Beatrice’s household livelihood portfolio remains high risk, and unlikely to generate sufficient financial capital to adopt climate adaptations.
Among non-farm livelihood diversification, chronically poor households often took up piece work or casual labour, such as building, gardening, or clearing fields. However, due to the exploitative nature of piece work (Bouwman, Andersson and Giller 2021), these respondents could not build sufficient financial capital to support economic mobility. This is demonstrated by Elizabeth (CP, woman, 61), a chronically poor, female head of household, who shared the following: ‘We live in absolute poverty. We are surviving on relief food. Sometimes I go for piece works and earn a K54 after clearing someone’s farm. I get K5 for clearing 100 metres and work from five to ten hours.’
While the escapers illustrate that risk tolerance can support adoption of adaptation following accumulation of financial capital, those in chronic poverty, albeit continuously exposed to various forms of risk, do not have the luxury of attempting higher‑risk, higher-reward livelihood choices.
4.1.2 Education for risk management and tolerance
Reduced monetary poverty and increased liquidity can also enable improved outcomes in formal education. Even without increased liquidity, improved food security can support educational attainment, since respondents in chronic poverty shared that their children did not attend school due to a lack of food. In addition to the impact of nutritional deficiency on learning outcomes (Ferber and Baten 2024), respondents highlight the challenge of hungry children having to walk miles to the nearest primary school. This reality reinforces the pertinence of Path 2, through which reduced poverty supports human capital development without liquidity as a necessary intermediary.
Improved educational attainment featured among respondents achieving both sustained escapes and climate adaptation, with two of three sustained escapers having achieved post-secondary education. Skills training through on-the-job learning also built human capital, as demonstrated in the last sustained escaper.
Elijah (SE, man, 71) completed post-secondary education and achieved formal employment at the National Agricultural Management Board. Through this role, he was trained on various skills such as basic agriculture, storekeeping, and accounts. In agriculture, he diversified his crops – growing maize, beans, and groundnuts – and as rainfall became more erratic over time, he began to predict rainfall and adjust his investment between his different plots accordingly.
James (SE, man, 68) was supported by his sister and brotherin- law to complete his education, and was even able to pursue more specialised education through agricultural studies. He ultimately gained formal employment as a veterinary assistant with the Ministry of Agriculture.
While Donald (SE, man, 46) did not complete education past grade 4, he strengthened his livestock-keeping skills through an opportunity from a civil servant who knew his grandfather and who requested that Donald keep his livestock on his behalf.
Elijah’s training in storekeeping and accounts likely strengthened his entrepreneurial ventures into a fishing business and grocery stores, which contributed to his improved welfare in spite of having left his salaried employment. He adopted climate adaptation by diversifying crops and forming non-farm enterprises.
James’s formal training as a veterinary assistant lent itself well to his accumulation of over 100 cattle, and Donald’s on-the-job learning supported his continued livelihood as a livestock-keeper. These three climate-adapted livelihood portfolios were made successful in part through their formal and informal education, a resilience-building opportunity afforded notably less to women respondents. None of the ten women interviewed in either study phase was able to access formal education beyond grade 7, as a result of pregnancy (three respondents), or of their parents’ limited funds or support for their education.
In contrast to the three sustained escapers above, most late escapers did not complete primary education, with only one respondent (male) having completed grade 7. However, most (three of four late escapers) explicitly demonstrated their commitment to invest in their children’s educational attainment, irrespective of fluctuations in household wellbeing. Their investment may in fact be a form of risk management; while supporting high educational attainment can be cost-prohibitive among the chronically poor, investment in education supported a higher level of independence among adult-aged children of escapers. This resulted in lower dependency ratios, which increased respondents’ liquidity and, in some cases, redirected it towards climate adaptations. For instance, James (SE, man, 68) noted the following:
In this year [2022], none of our children were attending school, as they had all completed their education and were leading independent lives. We decided to invest in improving our irrigation system by purchasing a pump to enhance our agricultural efforts.
Other risk management strategies frequently employed by escapers were often explicitly linked to human capacity building through skills training. For instance, Donald (SE, man, 46) asserted the importance of availing veterinary services as soon as any animal in his herd displayed any signs of illness, and James’s (SE, man, 68) agricultural studies may have supported his decision to diversify farming plots. Formal educational attainment was also cited here; Donald cited the value of his wife’s educational attainment up to grade 7, which they use to interpret basic agricultural information regarding their farm-based livelihoods.
Indeed, all three sustained escapers cited the value of their wives’ collaboration in financial management and livelihood decision-making, which highlights spousal cooperation as a key contributor to mitigating households’ vulnerability to impoverishment and climate change. In contrast, both couples living in chronic poverty consist of only one economically active (male) spouse, limiting their income generation, and by extension, their resources and risk tolerance for proactive climate adaptation. This dynamic may partially be the result of very low educational attainment by their wives, due to multidimensional deprivations experienced most acutely by women and other marginalised groups in rural Zambia (Ngoma et al. 2023). These structural inequities also manifest in rapid poverty descents among multiple chronically poor female respondents as a result of illness or divorce from their spouse. Without the opportunity to build or rebuild their livelihoods, and with limited enforcement of child support laws following divorce (Shepherd et al. 2022), women in these households have little chance to build the livelihood capitals and resilience necessary to escape poverty or adapt their livelihoods to mitigate climate risks.
4.2 Paths 3 and 4: how can climate adaptation, achieved through diversified livelihoods, also support poverty reduction?
Climate-adaptive diversification was shown to reduce poverty among escapers by means of reduced climate risk exposure, aligning with Path 4 of the conceptual framework (Figure 1). However, the natural resource regeneration path (3) was less prevalent among respondents’ life histories.
4.2.1 Reduced climate shock exposure through non-farm diversification
Evidence of buffering against risk is consistent across late and sustained escapers, particularly those with non-farm enterprises, in light of the 2018/19 drought (Bond et al. 2021). In Western Province, which faces particularly high rainfall variability and drought risk (Ngoma et al. 2023), non-farm diversification can act as a mechanism for risk mitigation (Alfani et al. 2021). Indeed, among seven total escapers, six engaged in forms of self‑employment that do not rely directly on natural resources, while one focused exclusively on natural resource-based livelihoods (farming and fishing) without sustaining climate adaptation. Notably, for the only escaper who did not diversify into non-farm livelihoods, financial support from his eldest daughter’s formal employment at a salon was crucial for meeting household needs. This highlights that even respondents with successful farm-based livelihoods are at risk of impoverishment in the climate shock‑prone context of this study.
4.2.2 Continued food production as risk mitigation
Non-farm diversification to adapt to climate change, however, can expose households to other forms of shocks. In light of the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in Zambia (Shepherd et al. 2022), as well as the prevalence of idiosyncratic shocks, food production as a continued livelihood stream emerged as another enabler among respondents who escaped poverty. This is illustrated most starkly by contrasting transitory escapers with their sustained escaper and late escaper counterparts. TE respondents diversified into non‑farm enterprises, thus meeting the criteria for climate adaptation; however, they both moved away from food production altogether. Their households were consequently far more sensitive to economic shocks, such as increasingly high food and commodity prices and currency devaluation in Zambia (ibid.), contributing to their impoverishment.
Health shocks in particular, due to the lack of health services and physical infrastructure in much of rural Zambia (Makondo and Thomas 2024), were a common idiosyncratic shock among respondents, resulting in high expenditures to travel to health centres, as well as high opportunity costs. Faith (TE, woman, 52), a divorced respondent, shared that the sequential shocks of paying for family members’ funeral expenses and her son’s recurring illness increased her expenditures while reducing her income, since her storefront had to remain closed for an extended period. Faith shared the impact of these consecutive shocks:
There is hunger at home and all the money I make from selling repackaged cooking oil, mealie meal, and salt at the shop goes to feeding. I tried to revive my business by selling off six out of seven herds of cattle I had, but the money went to sorting out challenges we had. I planned to start building at the plot in 2014, but I have failed to continue and my blocks are wasting away. I have a grade 8 child to sponsor to school, but I have failed to pay her fees this year.
Despite having previously recently risen above the poverty line as a result of strategic investments in convenience stores, it was not possible for Faith to mitigate these shocks, resulting in her descent back into poverty. Without enough time or resources to invest in her enterprises, some form of food production, whether from farming or homestead gardening, would have supported consumption in times of low liquidity. Without this option, Faith is pushed into low-productivity work and distress sales of assets in order to meet household needs, with intergenerational implications on household educational attainment. This trajectory aligns with poverty dynamics literature (Diwakar and Shepherd 2022), which finds that consecutive shocks can drastically erode resilience and contribute to reversing a poverty escape.
Sustained and late escapers, in contrast, employed a more risk-mitigating approach to diversification. Six of the seven escapers continued to engage in farming crops or homestead gardening. Spousal cooperation once again acts as an enabler in this pathway, as spouses could specialise into farm or off-farm livelihoods, supporting increased income without jeopardising food production and household consumption. This strategy was employed by Anthony (LE, man, 49) and Martha (LE, woman, 50), who adopted farm-based adaptations such as crop diversification and established non-farm enterprises which are more protected from climate shocks. They shared that while restaurant sales buffered them from low crop yields during the 2019 drought, their continued farming and gardening ensured that they could meet their consumption needs when the pandemic lockdown substantially reduced their restaurant clientele.
4.3 Development resilience: enabling climate resilience or maladaptation?
The findings above reinforce the role of absorptive and adaptive capacity as mediating factors in the pathways between climate adaptation and poverty reduction. Absorptive capacity emerged as a critical factor in Paths 1 and 4 (Figure 1), by means of reducing risk exposure. Increased savings and accumulating assets such as livestock supported increased liquidity and buffering against shocks. Savings and assets enabled households to purchase the inputs required to strengthen their existing livelihoods and invest in climate-adaptive assets, and may have contributed to building the risk tolerance necessary to undertake climate-adaptive diversification.
Adaptive capacity, built most notably through access to both formal and informal education, supported households’ strategic decision-making. Escaper households were able to balance between risk mitigation and calculated risk tolerance, including starting businesses using existing productive assets, or taking up riskier adaptations only after building strong asset bases or reducing their household dependency ratios. While escaper households strategically balanced farming and off-farm livelihoods to buffer against climate and macroeconomic risks, such as the pandemic’s economic impact, chronically poor households had neither the absorptive capacity to buffer against these shocks nor the adaptive capacity to adopt proactive climate adaptations.
Importantly, there were also clear gender disparities in respondents’ opportunities to build these capacities. With limited access and control of financial capital, including land tenure, most female respondents experienced rapid poverty descents following separation or divorce, leaving few avenues to rebuild their absorptive capacity. Formal educational attainment by women respondents was also limited, with three of the eleven women never having attended school, and three women having dropped out before completing grade 7 due to early pregnancy. These gendered barriers to financial and human capitals, critical for building absorptive and adaptive capacities, support the argument that gender equity is a necessary step to meet adaptation and poverty reduction objectives (Call and Sellers 2019).
Respondents with strong adaptive capacity from a poverty lens were not exempt from maladaptive choices, notably with respect to climate outcomes. In response to low yields from high rainfall variability and recurrent droughts, escapers exploited scarce natural resources to improve their agricultural output and supplement their household consumption. This finding emerged most notably through sustained escapers growing crops on ecologically sensitive land. Two of three sustained escapers began to grow crops or gardens in dry wetlands, marshes, or forested areas, to adapt to variable rainfall. One respondent, Elijah (SE, man, 71), would alternate between tending to crops planted in forests or in marshlands based on how much rain he expected. James (SE, man, 68), came across a dry wetland during the 2019 drought, in which he planted maize and vegetables which he watered by digging a well. In both cases, these respondents were able to apply skills they gained from their high educational attainment and previous formal employment to make adaptive choices to improve their households’ consumption.
However, considering the carbon emissions from deforestation (Veste et al. 2024), and evidence that even micro-irrigation can disrupt water supply elsewhere in the community (Vincent et al. 2013), these respondents’ adaptation to low yields are in fact maladaptive from a multi-scalar climate perspective. These sustained escapers are coping with climate variability at the expense of longer-term climate resilience, which, as highlighted by Dilling et al. (2015), is not true climate adaptation. This novel finding contributes to the growing evidence illustrating the prevalence of coping over adaptation among Zambian smallholders (Dumenu and Takam Tiamgne 2020). However, in a context of extremely limited economic opportunities, households may have no option but to jeopardise longer-term adaptation outcomes for their short-term survival. This tension reinforces the importance of long-standing development goals, such as productive inclusion or physical infrastructure for market linkages, to mitigate risks of climate maladaptation.
Respondents’ life histories demonstrate how poverty reduction can enable autonomous adaptation to climate change by increasing financial capital and building human capital, particularly through education and skills training. Concurrently, climate adaptations such as non-farm diversification were also found to improve household welfare by reducing exposure to climate shocks. Resilience, namely absorptive and adaptive capacities, were found to be key mediators of these bidirectional pathways. Absorptive capacity supported dual outcomes through risk mitigation, by reducing sensitivity and exposure to shocks. Climate adaptations such as establishing non-farm enterprises reduced sensitivity to rainfall variability, allowing households to smooth their consumption and remain above the poverty line. With strengthened absorptive capacity, respondents also appeared more willing to take on riskier forms of climate adaptation, such as diversifying into horticultural plants, without jeopardising their household’s welfare. These results suggest that collective risk management, including formal risk management instruments such as indexed insurance, may be critical to supporting climate-adapted poverty escapes. These instruments target two critical objectives: preventing impoverishment from shocks and promoting more risk-tolerant behaviour among resource-poor smallholders in greatest need of climate adaptation. Indeed, indexed insurance has been proposed as a priority investment to address high climate exposure and vulnerability among Zambian smallholders (Ngoma et al. 2023) with evidence that it may improve smallholders’ risk tolerance (Haile et al. 2020), including in Zambia (Miura and Sakurai 2015).
In contrast to the strategic livelihood portfolios composed by escapers, households with little absorptive capacity were forced into low productivity, undertaking precarious work, such as piece work or environmentally exploitative livelihoods, which enabled little more than survival. Notable disparities in idiosyncratic risk exposure, such as the impact of divorce on women respondents, highlight the gendered nature of resilience capacities, poverty dynamics, and adaptation options available to women. The gendered determinants of climate adaptation decisions, which are under-researched in sub-Saharan Africa (Call and Sellers 2019), should be prioritised to support equity in adaptation programming.
Finally, although adaptive capacity often played a role in mediating bidirectionality, respondents with high adaptive capacity from a development perspective in some instances were also found to engage in maladaptation from a climate lens, a novel finding which merits further study. If further substantiated, this finding suggests that climate-blind poverty reduction programmes may heighten the risk of maladaptation, eventually jeopardising poverty outcomes as well as climate resilience, thereby reinforcing the urgency of interventions explicitly targeting co-benefits. Programmes supporting households to build absorptive capacity, such as social cash transfers, could also provide more options for households with high adaptive capacity to meet their consumption needs without contributing to collective climate vulnerability.
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funder.
2 Cheryl Joseph, MA alumni, Institute of Development Studies, UK.
3 Respondent names have been anonymised.
4 Based on the World Bank’s (2026) official exchange rate in 2019, when this life history interview was conducted, K5 was equivalent to US$0.39.
5 Where sustained and late escapers are referenced jointly in the analysis, they are referred to as ‘escapers’.
Alfani, F.; Arslan, A.; McCarthy, N.; Cavatassi, R. and Sitko, N. (2021) ‘Climate Resilience in Rural Zambia: Evaluating Farmers’ Response to El Niño-Induced Drought’, Environment and Development Economics 26.5–6: 582–604, DOI: 10.1017/S1355770X21000097
Arslan, A. et al. (2018) ‘Diversification Under Climate Variability as Part of a CSA Strategy in Rural Zambia’, Journal of Development Studies 54.3: 457–80, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2017.1293813
Barrett, C.B.; Reardon, T. and Webb, P. (2001) ‘Nonfarm Income Diversification and Household Livelihood Strategies in Rural Africa: Concepts, Dynamics, and Policy Implications’, Food Policy 26.4: 315–31, DOI: 10.1016/S0306-9192(01)00014-8
Béné, C.; Frankenberger, T. and Nelson, S. (2015) Design, Monitoring and Evaluation of Resilience Interventions: Conceptual and Empirical Considerations, IDS Working Paper 459, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (accessed 25 March 2026)
Béné, C.; Godfrey Wood, R.; Newsham, A. and Davies, M. (2012) Resilience: New Utopia or New Tyranny? Reflection about the Potentials and Limits of the Concept of Resilience in Relation to Vulnerability Reduction Programmes, IDS Working Paper 405, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (accessed 25 March 2026)
Bond, V. et al. (2021) A Qualitative Understanding of Poverty Dynamics in Zambia, Qualitative Study, Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (accessed 25 March 2026)
Bouwman, T.I.; Andersson, J.A. and Giller, K.E. (2021) ‘Herbicide Induced Hunger? Conservation Agriculture, Ganyu Labour and Rural Poverty in Central Malawi’, Journal of Development Studies 57.2: 244–63, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2020.1786062
Call, M. and Sellers, S. (2019) ‘How Does Gendered Vulnerability Shape the Adoption and Impact of Sustainable Livelihood Interventions in an Era of Global Climate Change?’, Environmental Research Letters 14.8: 083005, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab2f57
Chonabayashi, S.; Jithitikulchai, T. and Qu, Y. (eds) (2020) ‘Does Agricultural Diversification Build Economic Resilience to Drought and Flood? Evidence from Poor Households in Zambia’, African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 15.1, DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.307618
Dercon, S. and Christiaensen, L. (2011) ‘Consumption Risk, Technology Adoption and Poverty Traps: Evidence from Ethiopia’, Journal of Development Economics 96.2: 159–73, DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2010.08.003
Dilling, L.; Daly, M.E.; Travis, W.R.; Wilhelmi, O.V. and Klein, R.A. (2015) ‘The Dynamics of Vulnerability: Why Adapting to Climate Variability Will Not Always Prepare Us for Climate Change’, WIREs Climate Change 6.4: 413–25, DOI: 10.1002/wcc.341
Diwakar, V. and Shepherd, A. (2022) ‘Sustaining Escapes from Poverty’, World Development 151: 105611, DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105611
Dumenu, W.K. and Takam Tiamgne, X. (2020) ‘Social Vulnerability of Smallholder Farmers to Climate Change in Zambia: The Applicability of Social Vulnerability Index’, SN Applied Sciences 2: 436, DOI: 10.1007/s42452-020-2227-0
Eriksen, S.E.H.; Klein, R.J.T.; Ulsrud, K.; Naess, L.O. and O’Brien, K. (2007) Climate Change Adaptation and Poverty Reduction: Key Interactions and Critical Measures, GECHS Report, Oslo: Global Environmental Change and Human Security, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo
Ferber, S. and Baten, J. (2024) ‘Nutrition Matters: Numeracy, Child Nutrition and Schooling Efficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Long Run’, Journal of Development Studies 60.7: 1021–45, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2024.2322974
Glick, P. (2008) ‘What Policies Will Reduce Gender Schooling Gaps in Developing Countries: Evidence and Interpretation’, World Development 36.9: 1623–46, DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.09.014
Haile, K.K.; Nillesen, E. and Tirivayi, N. (2020) ‘Impact of Formal Climate Risk Transfer Mechanisms on Risk-Aversion: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ethiopia’, World Development 130: 104930, DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104930
Hansen, J. et al. (2019) ‘Climate Risk Management and Rural Poverty Reduction’, Agricultural Systems 172: 28–46, DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2018.01.019
IPCC (2023) Climate Change 2022 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Labeyrie, V. et al. (2021) ‘The Role of Crop Diversity in Climate Change Adaptation: Insights from Local Observations to Inform Decision Making in Agriculture’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 51: 15–23, DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2021.01.006
Makondo, C.C. and Thomas, D.S.G. (2024) ‘Multidimensional Poverty and Vulnerability Assessment in the Face of Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Economies: Focus on Ecosystem-Based Livelihoods in Zambia’, Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development 28.3: 7011–57, DOI: 10.1007/s10668-024-05253-6
Miura, K. and Sakurai, T. (2015) The Impact of Formal Insurance Provision on Farmer Behavior: Evidence from Rural Zambia, PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series 67, Tokyo: Hitotsubashi University Institute of Economic Research (accessed 25 March 2026)
Musumba, M.; Palm, C.A.; Komarek, A.M.; Mutuo, P.K. and Kaya, B. (2022) ‘Household Livelihood Diversification in Rural Africa’, Agricultural Economics 53.2: 246–56, DOI: 10.1111/agec.12694
Ngoma, H.; Finn, A. and Kabisa, M. (2023) ‘Climate Shocks, Vulnerability, Resilience and Livelihoods in Rural Zambia’, Climate and Development 16.6: 1–12, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2023.2246031
Ngoma, H.; Lupiya, P.; Kabisa, M. and Hartley, F. (2021a) ‘Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture and Household Welfare in Zambia: An Economy-Wide Analysis’, Climatic Change 167: 55, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03168-z
Ngoma, H.; Pelletier, J.; Mulenga, B.P. and Subakanya, M. (2021b) ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture, Cropland Expansion and Deforestation in Zambia: Linkages, Processes and Drivers’, Land Use Policy 107: 105482, DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105482
O’Brien, G.; O’Keefe, P.; Meena, H.; Rose, J. and Wilson, L. (2008) ‘Climate Adaptation from a Poverty Perspective’, Climate Policy 8.2: 194–201, DOI: 10.3763/cpol.2007.0430
Rahut, D.B.; Aryal, J.P. and Marenya, P. (2021) ‘Understanding Climate-Risk Coping Strategies among Farm Households: Evidence from Five Countries in Eastern and Southern Africa’, Science of The Total Environment 769: 145236, DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145236
Shepherd, A. et al. (2022) ‘Layered Crises Preventing Poverty Reduction: An Analysis of Zambian Poverty Dynamics and Policy Implications’, in A. Antoniades, A.S. Antonarakis and I. Kempf (eds), Financial Crises, Poverty and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and Covid-19 Recovery, Cham: Springer International Publishing
Shepherd, A. et al. (2014) The Chronic Poverty Report 2014‑2015: The Road to Zero Extreme Poverty, London: Overseas Development Institute (accessed 25 March 2026)
Tanner, T. and Horn-Phathanothai, L. (2014) ‘Adaptation Responses and Building Climate Resilient Development’, in T. Tanner and L. Horn-Phathanothai (eds), Climate Change and Development, London: Routledge
Tuihedur Rahman, H.; Albizua, A.; Soubry, B. and Tourangeau, W. (2021) ‘A Framework for Using Autonomous Adaptation as a Leverage Point in Sustainable Climate Adaptation’, Climate Risk Management 34: 100376, DOI: 10.1016/j.crm.2021.100376
Ulrichs, M.; Slater, R. and Costella, C. (2019) ‘Building Resilience to Climate Risks through Social Protection: From Individualised Models to Systemic Transformation’, Disasters 43.S3: S368–87, DOI: 10.1111/disa.12339
Veste, M. et al. (2024) ‘The Need for Sustainable Agricultural Land‑Use Systems: Benefits from Integrated Agroforestry Systems’, in G.P. von Maltitz et al. (eds), Sustainability of Southern African Ecosystems under Global Change: Science for Management and Policy Interventions, Cham: Springer International Publishing
Vincent, K. et al. (2013) ‘Farmers’ Responses to Climate Variability and Change in Southern Africa – Is It Coping or Adaptation?’, Climate and Development 5.3: 194–205, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2013.821052
World Bank (2026) Official Exchange Rate (LCU per US$, Period Average) – Zambia (accessed 17 April 2026)
ZamStats (2023) Highlights of the 2022 Poverty Assessment in Zambia, Lusaka: Zambia Statistics Agency (accessed 26 March 2026)
© 2026 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2026.171
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 57 No. 2 July 2026 ‘Climate Resilience and Poverty Reduction’.