Investigating the impacts of climate change: vulnerability on livelihoods and the environment; the case of Luangwa district, Zambia.

In Zambia rain fed subsistence agriculture is under serious threat from climate change. In response to the adverse effects of climate change and vulnerability, rural communities tend to diversify their livelihoods, supplementing agriculture with natural resource extraction. Their extraction methods are often times unguided and unsustainable hence these activities have detrimental residual effects on the environment which in-turn exacerbate the problems that led to such practices. This study was aimed at assessing how climate change vulnerability leads to biodiversity loss due to unsustainable livelihood diversification in Luangwa district of Zambia. The study used various qualitative research methods of data collection such as household farmer survey, focus group discussions, fishermen and wildlife camp officers’ interviews, key informant interviews with government heads of departments, and the analysis of secondary meteorological data to address the research objective. The study established that climate change vulnerability and unsustainable, climate induced livelihood diversification leads to serious environmental threats that can lead to biodiversity loss. Some of the most serious environmental threats that have emerged in Luangwa district due to climate change include; (i) deforestation due to unsustainable charcoal production, this has led to wildlife habitat fragmentation, reduced forest cover undermining the greenhouse gas sequestration potential, and increased anthropogenic climate change, (ii) depletion of fish stocks due to overfishing in both the Zambezi river and the Luangwa river (iii) high levels of wildlife poaching. As vulnerability is highly associated with adaptive capacity, it has been established that once people become vulnerable, their social networks and structures, and their resilience and economic capacity to deal with climate associated problems are weakened, and they usually move towards destitution. This paper advocates that climate change adaptation practices for rural communities be developed to guide and assist sustainable natural resource management through this climate critical period.