Characterising the nature of household vulnerability to climate variability: empirical evidence from two regions of Ghana

This paper builds on national- and regional-level vulnerability assessments by developing and applying a livelihood vulnerability index at the community and household scales to explore the nature of climate vulnerability. It provides innovative methodological steps in relation to livelihood assessment to identify the vulnerability of households and communities to drought. This will help to improve drought vulnerability assessments in Ghana and more widely as it shows extra information can be obtained from local-level vulnerability assessment that may be lacking in national- and regional-level analysis. The research employs quantitative and qualitative data collected through participatory methods, key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey with 270 households across 6 communities in two regions in Ghana. Results show that within the same agroecological zone, households and communities experience different degrees of climate vulnerability. These differences can be largely explained by socioeconomic characteristics such as wealth and gender, as well as access to capital assets. Results identify vulnerable households within resilient communities as well as more resilient households within vulnerable communities. These outliers are studied in detail. It is found that outlier households in vulnerable communities have an array of alternative livelihood options and tend to be socially well connected, enabling them to take advantage of opportunities associated with environmental and economic changes. To sustain and enhance the livelihoods of vulnerable households and communities, policymakers need to identify and facilitate appropriate interventions that foster asset building, improve institutional capacity as well as build social capital.     

Participatory assessment of the sustainability of livelihoods in the agroecosystem of Abesard,Iran

In order to improve the livelihoods of communities and make them more sustainable, study of the vulnerability of livelihoods seems necessary. In this paper, participatory vulnerability analysis was used within a sustainable rural livelihoods framework to assess the sustainability of livelihoods in the agroecosystem of Abesard, Iran. In addition, this paper explored vulnerability contexts that affect livelihood assets. Findings revealed that land use change, climate variability, market fluctuations and higher mechanisation were the main reasons of vulnerability. To overcome these problems and to adapt to changes, households have followed livelihood strategies such as agricultural intensification, livelihood diversification, and agricultural biodiversity. The government has also provided some services such as extension programmes, fertilizers, and subsidies to compensate for asset limitations. Overall, implementation of the following development policies are recommended: (1) support of agricultural production by government institutions; (2) moving towards the development of sustainable agricultural practises that integrate a variety of methods in a sustainable manner; (3) development of agricultural intensification in a sustainable way that compensates for any inadequacy of assets; and (4) providing adult vocational training programmes for both men and women related to on-farm and off-farm activities. In the end, results highlighted the need for more emphasis on overcoming the challenges of sustainable agriculture using a participatory approach in assessment of the vulnerability of community livelihoods.     

Perceived stressors of climate vulnerability across scales in the Savannah zone of Ghana: a participatory approach

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with climatic and non-climatic stressors. Research attention has focused on climatic stressors, such as rainfall variability, with few empirical studies exploring non-climatic stressors and how these interact with climatic stressors at multiple scales to affect food security and livelihoods. This focus on climatic factors restricts understanding of the combinations of stressors that exacerbate the vulnerability of farming households and hampers the development of holistic climate change adaptation policies. This study addresses this particular research gap by adopting a multi-scale approach to understand how climatic and non-climatic stressors vary, and interact, across three spatial scales (household, community and district levels) to influence livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farming households in the Savannah zone of northern Ghana. This study across three case study villages utilises a series of participatory tools including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The incidence, importance, severity and overall risk indices for stressors are calculated at the household, community, and district levels. Results show that climatic and non-climatic stressors were perceived differently; yet, there were a number of common stressors including lack of money, high cost of farm inputs, erratic rainfall, cattle destruction of crops, limited access to markets and lack of agricultural equipment that crossed all scales. Results indicate that the gender of respondents influenced the perception and severity assessment of stressors on rural livelihoods at the community level. Findings suggest a mismatch between local and district level priorities that have implications for policy and development of agricultural and related livelihoods in rural communities. Ghana’s climate change adaptation policies need to take a more holistic approach that integrates both climatic and non-climatic factors to ensure policy coherence between national climate adaptation plans and District development plans.     

Development,local livelihoods,and vulnerabilities to global environmental change in the South American Dry Andes

Climate change will increasingly impact large areas of South America, affecting important natural resources and people’s livelihoods. These impacts will make rural people disproportionately more vulnerable, given their dependency on ecosystem services and their exposure to other stressors, such as new rules imposed by agribusiness and trends toward the commodification of natural resources. This paper focuses on the vulnerability of rural communities in Andean drylands of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, showing how different economic and political pathways lead to different levels of vulnerability. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the methodological and theoretical concept of vulnerability, which framed the research. Starting from the premise that global environmental change impacts are strongly linked to styles of development, the discussion explores the diverse institutional capital and governance schemes as well as different development styles in the case studies and their role in increasing or reducing local vulnerability to climate and water scarcity. Using a comparative perspective, the exposures and adaptive capacities of rural actors in three river basins are discussed, emphasizing situations that speak for the ways in which development styles counteract or magnify conditions of vulnerability. The analysis considers irrigated and non-irrigated agriculture, water property interests, different productive structures (viticulture, horticulture, etc.), producer typologies (large/small, export, etc.), and geographical location. Finally, the paper offers some insights about development style and adaptive capacities of rural people to overcome those vulnerabilities.     

What is in an index? Construction method,data metric,and weighting scheme determine the outcome of composite social vulnerability indices in New York City

Mapping social vulnerability is a prominent way to identify regions in which the lack of capacity to cope with the impacts of weather extremes is nested in the social setting, aiding climate change adaptation for vulnerable residents, neighborhoods, or localities. Calculating social vulnerability usually involves the construction of a composite index, for which several construction methods have been suggested. However, thorough investigation of results across methods or applied weighting of vulnerability factors is largely missing. This study investigates the outcome of the variable addition—both with and without weighting of single vulnerability factors—and the variable reduction approach/model on social vulnerability indices calculated for New York City. Weighting is based on scientific assessment reports on climate change impacts in New York City. Additionally, the study calculates the outcome on social vulnerability when using either area-based (person/km²) or population-based (%) input data. The study reveals remarkable differences between indices particularly when using different methods but also when using different metrics as input data. The variable addition model has deductive advantages, whereas the variable reduction model is useful when the strength of factors of social vulnerability is unknown. The use of area-based data seems preferable to population-based data when differences are taken as a measure of credibility and quality. Results are important for all forms of vulnerability mapping using index construction techniques.

     

Using a novel climate–water conflict vulnerability index to capture double exposures in Lake Chad

Climate variability is amongst an array of threats facing agricultural livelihoods, with its effects unevenly distributed. With resource conflict being increasingly recognised as one significant outcome of climate variability and change, understanding the underlying drivers that shape differential vulnerabilities in areas that are double-exposed to climate and conflict has great significance. Climate change vulnerability frameworks are rarely applied in water conflict research. This article presents a composite climate–water conflict vulnerability index based on a double exposure framework developed from advances in vulnerability and livelihood assessments. We apply the index to assess how the determinants of vulnerability can be useful in understanding climate variability and water conflict interactions and to establish how knowledge of the climate–conflict linked context can shape interventions to reduce vulnerability. We surveyed 240 resource users (farmers, fishermen and pastoralists) in seven villages on the south-eastern shores of Lake Chad in the Republic of Chad to collect data on a range of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity variables. Results suggest that pastoralists are more vulnerable in terms of climate-structured aggressive behaviour within a lake-based livelihoods context where all resource user groups show similar levels of exposure to climate variability. Our approach can be used to understand the human and environmental security components of vulnerability to climate change and to explore ways in which conflict-structured climate adaptation and climate-sensitive conflict management strategies can be integrated to reduce the vulnerability of populations in high-risk, conflict-prone environments.     

Sub-basin scale characterization of climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation in an Indian River basin

Knowledge of climate change vulnerability and impacts is a prerequisite for formulating locally relevant climate change adaptation policies. A participatory approach has been used in this study to determine climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation aspects for the Kangsabati River basin, India. The study approach involved engaging with stakeholders representing state (sub-national), district and community levels, through an interactive brainstorming method, to understand stakeholder perceptions regarding (a) local characteristics which influence vulnerability, (b) climate change impacts and (c) relevant adaptation options. The study reveals that vulnerability varies across upstream, midstream and downstream sections of the river basin. Suggested adaptation options, in this predominantly agricultural basin, are found to be applicable across spatial scales. Stakeholder perceptions, regarding vulnerability and impacts, vary with the level of interaction, academic background and type of experience. Interaction confirms the notion that stakeholders have inherent knowledge regarding adaptation, reveals their preferences and ability to think unconventionally. We discuss limitations of the approach while demonstrating its ability to deliver locally relevant and acceptable adaptation options, which could facilitate implementation. We conclude that engaging stakeholders at multiple levels was highly effective in assessing locally relevant aspects of climate change vulnerability, impacts and applicable adaptation options in the Kangsabati River basin. Based on this assessment, a sub-basin scale is recommended for evaluating these aspects, especially for water resources and agricultural systems, through multi-level stakeholder input.     

A new method for analysing socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability

This paper presents a method for the analysis of socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability of people being at risk of losing their livelihoods as a consequence of global environmental change. This method fills a gap in methodologies for vulnerability analysis by providing generalizations of the factors that shape vulnerability in specific socio-ecological systems and showing their spatial occurrence. The proposed method consists of four steps that include both quantitative and qualitative analyses. To start, the socio-ecological system exposed to global environmental changes that will be studied needs to be determined. This could, for example, be farmers in drylands, urban populations in coastal areas and forest-dependent people in the tropics. Next, the core dimensions that shape vulnerability in the socio-ecological system of interest need to be defined. Subsequently, a set of spatially explicit indicators that reflect these core dimensions is selected. Cluster analysis is used for grouping the indicator data. The clusters found, referred to as vulnerability profiles, describe different typical groupings of conditions and processes that create vulnerability in the socio-ecological system under study, and their spatial distribution is provided. Interpretation and verification of these profiles is the last step in the analysis. We illustrate the application of this method by analysing the patterns of vulnerability of (smallholder) farmers in drylands. We identify eight distinct vulnerability profiles in drylands that together provide a global overview of different processes taking place and sub-national detail of their distribution. By overlaying the spatial distribution of these profiles with specific outcome indicators such as conflict occurrence or migration, the method can also be used to understand these phenomena better. Analysis of vulnerability profiles will in a next step be used as a basis for identifying responses to reduce vulnerability, for example, to facilitate the transfer of best practices to reduce vulnerability between different places.     

Power asymmetries and institutions: landscape conservation in central India

Understanding the importance of cross-sectoral implications of climate and socio-economic change in Scotland is essential for adaptation policy. This study explored the direct and indirect sectoral impacts of future change using the CLIMSAVE Integrated Assessment Platform. There is great spatial diversity in projected impacts across Scotland, and increasing uncertainty in the direction of change of impacts from the national to regional scale associated with climate uncertainty. Further uncertainty associated with socio-economic change results in 6 out of 13 indicators (artificial surfaces, biodiversity vulnerability, forest area, land-use intensity, irrigation usage and land-use diversity) with robust directions of change at the national scale and only three (artificial surfaces, forest area and irrigation usage) that are robust across all regions of Scotland. Complex interactions between socio-economic scenario assumptions (e.g. food imports, population and GDP), climatic suitability and agricultural productivity and profitability lead to significant national and regional changes in the distribution and extent of land cover types, with resultant cross-sectoral interactions with water, forestry and biodiversity. Consequently, stakeholders characterised robust adaptation policy options, within the CLIMSAVE participatory process, as those beneficial to society (and the country) in all scenarios, irrespective of the direction of change of the impacts. The integration in CLIMSAVE of a participatory scenario development process and an integrated participatory modelling framework has allowed the exploration of future uncertainty in a structured approach and better represented the importance of qualitative information and the social and institutional contexts within adaptation research.     

Communities and change in the anthropocene: understanding social-ecological vulnerability and planning adaptations to multiple interacting exposures

The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical—and increasingly empirical—work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.     

Synergistic vulnerabilities: climate variability and fire management policy increase farming challenges in southeastern Mexico

Agricultural fire for land preparation is central in the livelihoods of subsistence farmers practicing shifting cultivation. Achieving a good agricultural burn, one in which the biomass is thoroughly consumed within the chosen area, depends on specific weather conditions. Fire use decisions are also shaped by institutions that define the timing and rules for fire use but also constrain the alternatives and shape adaptive capacities. Global and regional climate changes interact with the institutional framing of fire management affecting local fire use and burn outcomes. These effects are documented and analyzed to suggest adaptations to existing governance systems. We examined subsistence farmers’ socio-ecological vulnerability in the Calakmul municipality, located in southeastern Mexico. Using interviews with farmers and government agents, as well as participatory mapping and observation of agricultural burns, we studied fire management knowledge, practices and burn outcomes. Our results describe a continuum of burn outcomes covering good agricultural burns, uncontrolled burns leading to wildfires and “malquemados” literally poorly burned areas. Malquemados represent unsuccessful combustion associated with excess moisture that results in scorched vegetation. We discuss how unexpected early rains trigger effects that cascade through space and the ecological, economic and cultural domains. We argue that fire management has been historically approached from a conservation standpoint yet agricultural fire use and wildfire prevention should also be addressed from a rural development perspective. This shift in fire management would lead to the proper inclusion of the entire array of burn outcomes in studies and policies addressing farmers’ vulnerability amplified by synergistic effects between climate variability and institutional change.     

How do we assess vulnerability to climate change in India? A systematic review of literature

In countries like India where multiple risks interact with socio-economic differences to create and sustain vulnerability, assessing the vulnerability of people, places, and systems to climate change is a critical tool to prioritise adaptation. In India, several vulnerability assessment tools have been designed spanning multiple disciplines, by multiple actors, and at multiple scales. However, their conceptual, methodological, and disciplinary underpinnings, and resulting implications on who is identified as vulnerable, have not been interrogated. Addressing this gap, we systematically review peer-reviewed publications (n = 78) and grey literature (n = 42) to characterise how vulnerability to climate change is assessed in India. We frame our enquiry against four questions: (1) How is vulnerability conceptualised (vulnerability of whom/what, vulnerability to what), (2) who assesses vulnerability, (3) how is vulnerability assessed (methodology, scale), and (4) what are the implications of methodology on outcomes of the assessment. Our findings emphasise that methods to assess vulnerability to climate change are embedded in the disciplinary traditions, methodological approaches, and often-unstated motivations of those designing the assessment. Further, while most assessments acknowledge the importance of scalar and temporal aspects of vulnerability, we find few examples of it being integrated in methodology. Such methodological myopia potentially overlooks how social differentiation, ecological shifts, and institutional dynamics construct and perpetuate vulnerability. Finally, we synthesise the strengths and weaknesses of current vulnerability assessment methods in India and identify a predominance of research in rural landscapes with a relatively lower coverage in urban and peri-urban settlements, which are key interfaces of transitions.     

Climate change,food security,and livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Multiple biophysical, political, and socioeconomic stresses interact to increase the region’s susceptibility and constrain its adaptive capacity. Climate change is commonly recognized as a major issue likely to have negative consequences on food security and livelihoods in the region. This paper reviews three bodies of scholarship that have evolved somewhat separately, yet are inherently interconnected: climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, food security, and sustainable livelihoods. The paper develops a conceptualization of the relationships among the three themes and shows how food security’s vulnerabilities are related to multiple stresses and adaptive capacities, reflecting access to assets. Food security represents one of several livelihood outcomes. The framework shows how several research paradigms relate to the issue of food security and climate change and provides a guide for empirical investigations. Recognizing these interconnections can help in the development of more effective policies and programs. The framework is applied here to synthesize findings from an array of studies in sub-Saharan Africa dealing with vulnerability to climate change, food security, and livelihoods.     

Climate change,multiple stressors and human vulnerability: a systematic review

We systematically reviewed current climate change literature in order to examine how multiple processes that affect human vulnerability have been studied. Of the 125 reviewed articles, 79 % were published after 2009. There are numerous concepts that point out to stressors other than climate change that were used in reviewed studies. These different concepts were used interchangeably, and they illustrate processes that act on different scales. Most widely used concepts included non-climatic (40 % of the articles), multiple stressors (38 %) and other factors (37 %). About 75 % of the studies either acknowledged or carefully analyzed the social and environmental context in which vulnerability is experienced. One-third of the studies recognized climate change-related stressors as the most important, one-third argued that stressors other than climate are more important, and the rest of the studies did not analyze the relative importance of the different processes. Interactions between different stressors were mentioned in 76 % and analyzed explicitly in 28 % of the articles. Our review shows that there are studies that analyze the social context of vulnerability within climate change-related literature and this literature is rapidly expanding. Reviewed studies point out that there are multiple interacting stressors, whose interlinkages need to be carefully analyzed and targeted by policies, which integrate adaptation to climate change and other stressors. In conclusion, we suggest that future studies should include analytical frameworks that reflect dissimilarities between different types of stressors, methodological triangulation to identify key stressors and analysis of interactions between multiple stressors across different scales.     

A review of vulnerability indicators for deltaic social–ecological systems

The sustainability of deltas worldwide is under threat due to the consequences of global environmental change (including climate change) and human interventions in deltaic landscapes. Understanding these systems is becoming increasingly important to assess threats to and opportunities for long-term sustainable development. Here, we propose a simplified, yet inclusive social–ecological system (SES)-centered risk and vulnerability framework and a list of indicators proven to be useful in past delta assessments. In total, 236 indicators were identified through a structured review of peer-reviewed literature performed for three globally relevant deltas—the Mekong, the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna and the Amazon. These are meant to serve as a preliminary “library” of potential indicators to be used for future vulnerability assessments. Based on the reviewed studies, we identified disparities in the availability of indicators to populate some of the vulnerability domains of the proposed framework, as comprehensive social–ecological assessments were seldom implemented in the past. Even in assessments explicitly aiming to capture both the social and the ecological system, there were many more indicators for social susceptibility and coping/adaptive capacities as compared to those relevant for characterizing ecosystem susceptibility or robustness. Moreover, there is a lack of multi-hazard approaches accounting for the specific vulnerability profile of sub-delta areas. We advocate for more comprehensive, truly social–ecological assessments which respond to multi-hazard settings and recognize within-delta differences in vulnerability and risk. Such assessments could make use of the proposed framework and list of indicators as a starting point and amend it with new indicators that would allow capturing the complexity as well as the multi-hazard exposure in a typical delta SES.     

Living without buffers—illustrating climate vulnerability in the Lake Victoria basin

Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are essential, albeit theoretically vague, components of climate vulnerability. This has triggered debate surrounding how these factors can be translated into, and understood in, an empirical context subject to present and future harm. In this article, which draws on extensive fieldwork in the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya and Tanzania, we illustrate how exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity play out in the context of climate vulnerability and discuss how they interact in situ. Using a mixed methods approach including survey data, rainfall data and a suite of participatory methods, such as focus groups and interactive mapping of seasonal calendars, we identify how climate-induced stressors affect smallholder farmers’ well-being and natural resources. Drawing on the seasonal calendar as a heuristic, and climate vulnerability terminology, we illustrate when, where and how these climate-induced stressors converge to constrain farmers’ livelihoods. Our analysis indicates that farmers in the basin face a highly uncertain future with discernible, but differentiated, adaptation deficits due to recurring, and potentially worsening, patterns of hardship.     

Forest plantations, water availability, and regional climate change: controversies surrounding Acacia mearnsii plantations in the upper Palnis Hills, southern India

Plantation forests not only impact carbon and water cycles, but also affect biodiversity, livelihoods, and shape regional economies. Each of these impacts differs across varying scales of analysis. This paper illustrates how forest, climate change and hydrology debates play out in the context of the forest plantations of Australian black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) in the upper Palni hills of southern India. We outline the contradictory perspectives of different local groups regarding the impact of plantations on catchment hydrology and water availability, and examine these in relation to changes in the regional economy and rainfall patterns. Our analysis indicates that changes in these two factors have played a more significant role than existing wattle plantations in affecting local and regional water availability. We suggest that ongoing debates regarding forest plantation–hydrology–climate change relationships need to broaden their scope to include changes in regional rainfall patterns and shifts in regional economic activity. This approach is likely to provide a more realistic assessment of plantation forests in a dynamic regional context, and offer more resilient strategies for regional landscape and catchment management under conditions of high variability in rainfall patterns.     

Resilience and adaptation to extremes in a changing Himalayan environment

Human communities inhabiting remote and geomorphically fragile high-altitude regions are particularly vulnerable to climate change-related glacial hazards and hydrometeorological extremes. This study presents a strategy for enhancing adaptation and resilience of communities living immediately downstream of two potentially hazardous glacial lakes in the Upper Chenab Basin of the Western Himalaya in India. It uses an interdisciplinary investigative framework, involving ground surveys, participatory mapping, comparison of local perceptions of environmental change and hazards with scientific data, identification of assets and livelihood resources at risk, assessment of existing community-level adaptive capacity and resilience and a brief review of governance issues. In addition to recommending specific actions for securing lives and livelihoods in the study area, the study demonstrates the crucial role of regional ground-level, community-centric assessments in evolving an integrated approach to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation for high-altitude environments, particularly in the developing world.     

Farmers’ vulnerability to climate variability in Dimapur district of Nagaland, India

Certain parts of the State of Nagaland situated in the northeastern region of India have been experiencing rainfall deficit over the past few years leading to severe drought-like conditions, which is likely to be aggravated under a climate change scenario. The state has already incurred considerable losses in the agricultural sector. Regional vulnerability assessments need to be carried out in order to help policy makers and planners formulate and implement effective drought management strategies. The present study uses an ‘index-based approach’ to quantify the climate variability-induced vulnerability of farmers in five villages of Dimapur district, Nagaland. Indicators, which are reflective of the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the farmers to drought, were quantified on the basis of primary data generated through household surveys and participatory rural appraisal supplemented by secondary data in order to calculate a composite vulnerability index. The composite vulnerability index of village New Showba was found to be the least, while Zutovi, the highest. The overall results reveal that biophysical characteristics contribute the most to overall vulnerability. Some potential adaptation strategies were also identified based on observations and discussions with the villagers.     

Climate change adaptation and mitigation in smallholder crop–livestock systems in sub-Saharan Africa: a call for integrated impact assessments

African mixed crop–livestock systems are vulnerable to climate change and need to adapt in order to improve productivity and sustain people’s livelihoods. These smallholder systems are characterized by high greenhouse gas emission rates, but could play a role in their mitigation. Although the impact of climate change is projected to be large, many uncertainties persist, in particular with respect to impacts on livestock and grazing components, whole-farm dynamics and heterogeneous farm populations. We summarize the current understanding on impacts and vulnerability and highlight key knowledge gaps for the separate system components and the mixed farming systems as a whole. Numerous adaptation and mitigation options exist for crop–livestock systems. We provide an overview by distinguishing risk management, diversification and sustainable intensification strategies, and by focusing on the contribution to the three pillars of climate-smart agriculture. Despite the potential solutions, smallholders face major constraints at various scales, including small farm sizes, the lack of response to the proposed measures and the multi-functionality of the livestock herd. Major institutional barriers include poor access to markets and relevant knowledge, land tenure insecurity and the common property status of most grazing resources. These limit the adoption potential and hence the potential impact on resilience and mitigation. In order to effectively inform decision-making, we therefore call for integrated, system-oriented impact assessments and a realistic consideration of the adoption constraints in smallholder systems. Building on agricultural system model development, integrated impact assessments and scenario analyses can inform the co-design and implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies.F