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Paper short abstract:

Impacts of climate change have long been and are still being experienced in Zimbabwe's rural areas. There is hype of promoting global mitigatory measures to climate change vagaries at the expense of local specific strategies. This paper explores how local strategies are effective over long periods.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change effects are accellerating at a worrying rate and will continue to be one of the frontline issues around rural development and transformation in Africa. Vulnerable rural communities in Zimbabwe face the harsh effects of climate change and are forced to be dependent on their local knowledge on subsistence farming and livestock production. This paper examines the effectiveness of the local adaptation strategies using indigeneous knowledge systems to cope with deleterious effects of climate change that have affected rural farmers for over four decades. The sample consists of rural farmers who have stayed in Gwanda for over four decades. Methodologically, life history interviews, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were used for data collection. The results indicate that morden adaption methods have been tried in rural areas to no avail. Strategies such as solar powered pumps for irrigation require capital that rural farmers do not possess. To build resilience, households undertake a range of local led strategies such as homestead gardening, dry planting, adopting new crop varieties inter alia. A key arguement driven in this paper is that adapatation strategies are supposed to be local specific and determined by the socio-economic factors. Capacitating locals on access to finance and information about appropriate strategies appears to be crucial in enhancing the resilience of locally vulnerable households.

Keywords: Climate change, Resilience, Adaptation, Indigeneous knowledge systems, Livelihoods