摘要：This paper examines the success of small-scale farming livelihoods in adapting to climatevariability and change. We represent adaptation actions as choices within a response space that includescoping but also longer-term adaptation actions, and define success as those actions which promote systemresilience, promote legitimate institutional change, and hence generate and sustain collective action. Weexplore data on social responses from four regions across South Africa and Mozambique facing a varietyof climate risks. The analysis suggests that some collective adaptation actions enhance livelihood resilienceto climate change and variability but others have negative spillover effects to other scales. Any assessmentof successful adaptation is, however, constrained by the scale of analysis in terms of the temporal andspatial boundaries on the system being investigated. In addition, the diversity of mechanisms by whichrural communities in southern Africa adapt to risks suggests that external interventions to assist adaptationwill need to be sensitive to the location-specific nature of adaptation
