Dixon, JL and Stringer, LC (2015) Towards a theoretical grounding of climate resilience assessments for smallholder farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Resources, 4 (1). 128 - 154. ISSN 2079-9276
Abstract
Resilience assessments are increasingly used to inform management decisions and development interventions across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In light of current and future climate change and variability, there is growing interest in applying such tools and frameworks to assess and strengthen the climate resilience of smallholder farming systems. However, these assessments are often undertaken without explicit consideration of the resilience thinking in which they are grounded. This makes it difficult to understand how the conceptual aspects of resilience are translating into resilience assessment practice. This paper provides an important first step in tackling this gap, by identifying and using key characteristics of resilience thinking to evaluate existing resilience assessment tools and frameworks and drawing insights for assessing the climate resilience of smallholder farming systems. We find that power, politics, and agency, identified as important in the resilience literature, are not fully incorporated within current tools and frameworks. This leads to inadequate consideration of spatial and temporal trade-offs. We propose six recommendations for assessing the climate resilience of smallholder farming systems in SSA in order to enhance the linkages between resilience theory and practice. These are: (1) better integrate vulnerability and resilience; (2) recognize that resilience does not equal development or poverty reduction; (3) recognize the benefits and limitations of adopting flexible, participatory approaches; (4) integrate issues of power into assessment tools; (5) target specific systems; and (6) encourage knowledge sharing, empirical studies, and critical evaluation. Our findings contribute to improved understanding of applications of resilience thinking to enhance natural resource management.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Agriculture; Vulnerability; Adaptive capacity; Adaptation; Climate change; Development |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2015 14:21 |
Last Modified: | 01 Mar 2019 12:39 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/resources4010128 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/resources4010128 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:86316 |