Climate-smart livelihood strategies in rural and urban communities in eastern Zimbabwe: an in-depth literature study

ABSTRACT Implementation of climate-smart livelihood strategies in communities is central to reducing impacts of climate shocks. Although the communities are vulnerable to climate variability, the magnitude of vulnerability depends on the choice of livelihood strategies being implemented. This paper applied a realist synthesis method to evaluate peer-reviewed literature on climate-smart livelihood strategies pursued in southern Africa in general and eastern Zimbabwe in particular. A holistic analysis of all climate variables was applied to adequately assess rural and urban communities’ adaptive strategies at micro-level. Accordingly, this review gave a nuanced analysis of vulnerability that frames the context in which communities’ livelihoods are affected by the increasing climate variability and extreme events. The review highlighted agriculture that involves forestry, crop and livestock farming as the predominant livelihoods in rural communities while crop farming and petty business dominates the informal economy as the core livelihoods in urban communities. Literature established the transformation of agriculture to climate smart practices that increase productivity and enhance the resilience of livelihoods. However, climate smart agriculture practices are not entirely new concepts. Most communities have always engaged in a variety of unorthodox farming methods to combat the impacts of climate variability and induced food insecurity. Given the right financial, technical and policy support, the communities are capable of constructing climate-smart livelihood strategies that are context specific. Fundamentally, the paper recommends that public and private institutions should develop capabilities to assess the impacts of climate related scenarios on vulnerable social groups to empower them to formulate bankable livelihood projects.