Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Climate change is destabilising agro-based livelihoods in already fragile ecosystems around Zimbabwe. Other stressors such as poverty and the governance crisis are also compounding the situation. All the same, adaptation has been recognised as critical by farmers, researchers, policy makers and development practitioners. However, there are problems. Agrarian research is still underlined by the notion that “scientific technical progress” is the dominant way to overcome various obstacles. This conservative modernization seems evident in climate change adaptation through privileging “scientific solutions” and externally driven strategies. There is also persistent failure to understand adaptation as a process, a complex one for that matter. As such both current adaptation theory and practice in rural agriculture are not desirable because there is no clear departure from the past shaped by colonial encounters and separation of adaptation from other societal development imperatives continues. In that regard, this paper is based on farmers’ narratives obtained through qualitative research and their encounters with state and non-state actors in responding to climate change. Farmers’ question the scientific logic (or lack thereof) of various strategies introduced to them. In doing so, they have come up with their own strategies shaped by complex local conditions, structures and processes. In conclusion, human response to climate change is a product of both material and non-material conditions. Humans are also responding to climate change, as well as a very difficult socio-economic and political landscape prevailing in the country.