Toward anticipatory adaptation: Transforming social-ecological vulnerabilities in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

The ability of people to respond successfully to environmental variability is determined by their existing vulnerabilities and social-ecological relationships. At the same time, dominant policy and scholarly approaches to adaptation remain apolitical and pay inadequate attention to the links between structural vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Using a case study from the dynamic wetland environment of the Okavango Delta, Botswana, this paper draws on work in political ecology, vulnerability studies, and the emerging field of transformative adaptation to emphasise the need for an anticipatory approach to adaptation. While flooding variability is an inherent part of life in the Okavango Delta, high floods in 2009, 2010 and 2011 displaced hundreds of residents from their homes and inundated many floodplain agricultural fields past the point of production. A combination of household interviews, participant observation sessions, and household surveys was used to investigate the impacts of these flooding events, responses to them, and the implications of those responses. Findings reveal that the Government of Botswana began to regulate wetland-based livelihoods more strictly during the years the high floods occurred, and to encourage residents to switch permanently to dryland livelihoods. While these state-sponsored strategies appear to be practical responses to flooding variability, they ultimately result in decreased adaptive capacity for some people, especially members of the Bayei tribe. This group typically subsists from wetland-based livelihoods and has strong cultural ties to the waters of the Delta. By situating these findings within the historical context of marginalisation of ethnic minorities and rural communities in the country, and considering them in the light of predictions of future increases in environmental variability in the Okavango Delta, the paper identifies sites of potential transformation that would lead to improved adaptive capacities for vulnerable groups, in advance of the most significant impacts of climate change.