Emphasizing livelihoods in the study of social-ecological systems: insights from fishing practices in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

ABSTRACT

Climate change will impact rural livelihoods in Southern Africa in unprecedented ways. Successful responses must account for intersecting social and ecological factors that determine natural resource access for people living in changing social-ecological systems. However, much of the existing scholarly literature treats natural resource access as a dynamic social process, while often failing to account for how it is also ecologically variable. The social-ecological systems literature more holistically considers social and ecological aspects of resource use, but rarely considers how livelihoods themselves are social-ecological. This paper advances the argument that livelihoods are a useful entry point for understanding the complex and intersecting social-ecological factors that impact natural resource use. Findings are presented from a mixed-methods research project in the variable wetland environment of the Okavango Delta of Botswana to show how participation in various fishing practices is determined by a complex combination of flooding variability, environmental governance, and social relations tied to gender and ethnicity. This article contributes to the literatures on natural resource access and social-ecological systems, increases knowledge about rural livelihoods in Botswana, and provides broader insight into how governance of social-ecological livelihood systems throughout southern Africa are likely to be challenged by climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Livelihoods
• natural resource access
• social-ecological systems
• environmental governance
• Okavango Delta
• Botswana

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to extend her gratitude to Fuata John and Kentse Madise for their work as research assistants, to the residents of Etsha 6 and Etsha 13 who participated in this project, and to Brian King for his guidance throughout the research process. The authors would like to thank Michelle Bester for her assistance with the creation of Figure 1, as well as three anonymous reviewers for providing feedback that improved this manuscript. The Government of Botswana approved this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Research conducted by the first author was supported by the United States National Science Foundation under Grant BCS/GSS Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award-1234018 and a research grant from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.