Shocks and rural livelihoods in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Abstract

This paper describes the impacts that three shocks in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, have had on rural livelihoods: the desiccation of river channels, animal diseases, and HIV/AIDS. Primary data was collected from five study areas, using formal questionnaire interviews and focus group discussions. The paper reveals the adverse effects on rural livelihoods. It describes the way households have been exposed to poverty and vulnerability and the various ways they have coped or adapted, such as by re-allocating their labour, liquidating their assets to cover medical expenses and funeral costs, reducing the area ploughed for crops, hiring labour, digging wells and switching from flood recession agriculture to dryland farming. The Botswana government has provided safety nets to help households cope, but this paper recommends that people's responses to these shocks should be taken into account in future policy and programme formulation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie Wilk

Respectively, Associate Professor, and Senior Research Fellow, Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre, University of Botswana; and Lecturer, Department of Water and Environmental Studies, Linkôping University, Sweden. This study would not have been possible without the generous financial support from the European Union (INCO-DC Programme, contract IC4-CT-2001-10040) and the University of Botswana. The authors' special thanks also go to Professor Piers Blaikie of the University of East Anglia for critically reviewing the earlier draft of this paper, and to their colleagues at HOORC, Keta Mosepele and Monica Morrison, for reviewing the final draft.