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 examinine 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 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.