摘要：In this paper, we aim to investigate how local communities cope with and adapt to multiplestresses in rural semiarid South Africa. In semiarid regions water scarcity is one of a number of stressesthat shape livelihood vulnerability. With climate change, it is predicted that rainfall in South Africa willbecome more uncertain and variable in the future, exposing more people to water insecurity. At the sametime, the impacts of disease, a lack of institutional capacity, and limited livelihood opportunities can combineto limit adaptive capacity. Therefore, adaptation to changing climate should not be viewed in isolation butinstead in the context of social, economic, and political conditions, all of which shape local communityvulnerability and people's ability to cope with and adapt to change. This study uses a qualitative-quantitative-qualitative framework, including the use of a stated preference survey, to identify the driversof agroecosystem change, to understand the capacity of households to cope with droughts, and to determinethe ability of local institutions to respond to crises. The analysis suggests that the capacity of theagroecosystem to remain productive during droughts is decreasing, individual/household adaptive capacityremains low, and institutional capacity faces considerable barriers that prevent it from supportinghouseholds to adapt to multiple stresses. This research adds weight to the claim that vulnerability reflectsmultiple forces and processes, and that multiple stresses, that are agroecological, socioeconomic, andinstitutional in nature, need to be examined to understand vulnerability and to prevent maladaptation
