*4.3. Implications of Current Adaptation Responses in Bobirwa Sub-Districts*

How communities perceive climate change has implications on the adoption of strategies including the type of strategies implemented [46]. The socio-economic attributes, adaptation choices, and the determinants of these choices discussed in this study may have several implications for communities in Bobirwa sub-district. The semi-arid climate experienced in the sub-district highly exposes several economic sectors to the incremental impacts of climate change. Although local communities perceived a more adverse climate, their long experience of droughts appears to be causing household response strategies seem as part of their normal life. [46] also found that droughts had become a norm in Bobonong, such that local communities had become used to them. Therefore, the high adoption of different adaptation strategies by households in Bobirwa sub-district may suggest that current practices have been integrated as part of their livelihoods. However, failure to appreciate the incremental impacts of climate change by communities in Bobirwa could be limiting them from transforming and scaling up their adaptive responses.

The low crop yields during the study period given the free input support to farmers under ISPAAD suggest that current adaptation practices used in rain-fed crop production in the study area were inadequate. This could be partly due to the failure of the ISPAAD initiative to recognize the agroecology of the study area as a semi-arid area including issuing non-suitable crops and varieties for the prevailing climate. Less effective crop adaptations could mean that the production of food in Bobirwa sub-district will remain constrained and threaten household food security. The continued expansion of agricultural land in which households cannot fully implement effective adaptations may also indicate inadequate adaptations. Such less productive agricultural expansions are usually at the expense of biodiversity loss which underpins the delivery of provisioning ES.

Despite the devastating impacts of droughts, destocking and selling part of livestock remained low in the study area. With several uses of livestock such as food, draft power, source of income and a sign of wealth, households in Bobirwa sub-district seem reluctant to reduce their livestock even with severe droughts. Moreover, grazing at the communal grazing areas (cattle posts), including livestock ownership per household, was neither limited nor controlled. Under such circumstances, destocking remained an unpopular adaptation response [46]. The concentration of large livestock such as cattle threatens the sustainability of natural pastures at the cattle-posts. Livestock may end up moving longer distances in search of pastures which wastes their energy while also exposing them to theft and predation. In addition, farmers may eventually be forced to sell their livestock at much lower prices in the event that droughts are severe and prolonged.

While the surveyed households seemed reluctant to destock their livestock, the adoption of other strategies such as supplementary feeding, migrating livestock in search of pastures, and changing livestock composition by some households could indicate a desire to adapt their livestock production. While wealthy households may be able to purchase supplementary feed for their livestock, poor households may need to be assisted with subsidized feeds during severe droughts to avoid weight loss, reduced fertility, and deaths. Considering the smaller herds by poor households, it may be difficult for them to recover breeding stock that may be lost during droughts [46].

The failure to destock large livestock such as cattle which are susceptible to severe droughts despite receiving seasonal forecasts and drought early warning systems also highlight challenges faced by farmers in this regard. As highlighted before, the failure to destock is mainly be attributed to FMD. However, other challenges included limited markets (caused by FMD), the low prices at local markets may be better than drought-induced livestock deaths. Failure to adequately adapt livestock production may further limit the availability of draft power particularly from donkeys. Although draft power in the sub-district is provided by donkeys, livestock adaptations mainly focused on cattle and goats

which provide subsistence benefits such as meat and milk. This could have serious implications on crop production and adaptations which depend on draft power provided by donkeys. The increasing demand for free tillage services under ISPAAD requires that farmers provide their own tillage using draft power to minimize delays; hence, the need to also target donkeys in livestock adaptations.

For poor households, their current vulnerabilities may increase due to loss of biodiversity caused by inadequate adaptations in agriculture such as unnecessary agricultural expansions [66]. With warming and drought severity in Bobirwa sub-district likely to continue rising in the near future, the threats on livelihoods could be huge under current adaptation regimes similar to findings in other studies [67]. Since none of the adaptation measures were aimed at conserving or improving biodiversity, there is an urgent need for measures to safeguard the basis of provisioning ES in the sub-district. Communities in Bobirwa sub-district need to be proactive and engage the government, traditional authorities, civil society, private sector, and NGOs for guidance and support in addressing challenges in agriculture (crops and livestock), water, tourism, health, and migration [1,68].

With a growing human population, low agricultural productivity, and biodiversity loss, further investments are required to improve agricultural productivity and conservation of natural ecosystems in Bobirwa sub-district [69]. Similar to concerns by [70], a rise in food imports caused by low investments in African agriculture could make food unaffordable for poor households in the sub-district. Therefore, the implementation of initiatives such as ISPAAD and LIMID needs to be more effective and enhance agricultural productivity while also limiting the unnecessary loss of biodiversity [71,72]. However, such planned adaptations need to consider the associated trade-offs so that addressing low agricultural productivity does not infringe on the delivery of ecosystem products.

#### **5. Conclusions**

The high level of adaptation of off-farm and on-farm adaptations shown in this study suggests improved knowledge of the adverse incremental impacts of climate change. The high-level of adoption and implementation of on-farm and off-farm adaptation strategies shown by the local communities was mainly attributed to the perceived increase in the frequency and severity of droughts together with warmer temperatures in recent years. Although the choice and mix of adaptation strategies adopted by communities in Bobirwa sub-district may also indicate a high receptiveness to government programs in the agricultural sector, they also reveal inadequate responses to effectively act against incremental climate change. In their current state, the adaptation strategies in the sub-district may soon become redundant as the impacts of climate change become more intense. There is a need for government programs such as ISPAAD to also educate smallholder farmers and provide them with more localized information on climate forecasts, climate change, droughts and relevant agronomic practices to improve the efficacy of current responses. This could improve awareness among farmers and allow more efficient adaptations through accepting input packages that suit the agroecology of their area and not just their preferences. The government also needs to promote the establishment of off-farm opportunities in rural areas by encouraging investments which encourage processing and value addition of ecosystem products to broaden the livelihood base and possibly reduce overreliance on rainfed and dryland agriculture. Among the social and economic attributes of households, which had a homogeneous influence across all the available adaptation strategies, were the age of the household head (negative), annual remittances to the household (negative), the proportion of remittances devoted to financing adaptations (negative), number of rooms in the main house (negative), climate information (positive), and formal employment (positive). Among those largely associated with a high uptake of adaptations were years of formal education, being a full-time farmer, tropical livestock units, annual income, CBNRM benefits, land tenure arrangements, and being an adult, or elderly head of household. Being a female head of household, bigger household sizes, and bigger cropped area were largely associated with low adoption of the different adaptation strategies. The influence of these socio-economic attributes of households provide critical information for adjusting government

programs such as ISPAAD and provide important entry points for influencing uptake of more effective adaptations by local communities.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing original draft preparation, E.M.; writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, H.M. and M.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was carried out under the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions project (ASSAR). ASSAR is one of four research programs funded under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), with financial support from the UK Government's Department for International Development (DfID), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of DfID and IDRC or its Board of Governors.

**Acknowledgments:** We appreciate the Southern Africa ASSAR team for helping with the development of the household survey questionnaire, particularly those at the University of Botswana who helped with the localization of the questionnaire. Thanks to Chandapiwa Molefe for co-supervising the household survey, and to Metseotata Mafoko and Lerato Sebola for helping with planning of the household survey. All the traditional leaders and Village Development Committees who helped with mobilizing of study participants and the local communities in Bobirwa sub-district, particularly the participants in our study, are much appreciated. We also appreciate the assistance of the 10 enumerators who administered the household interviews and captured the data for analysis

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
