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Perceptions of climate change, multiple stressors and livelihoods on marginal African coasts

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Abstract

Studies of multiple stressors in Africa often focus on vulnerable inland communities. Rising concentrations of the world’s poor live in coastal rural–urban areas with direct dependencies on marine as well as terrestrial ecosystem goods and services. Using participatory methods we elicited perceptions of stressors and their sources, impacts and consequences held by coastal communities in eastern Africa (Mtwara in Tanzania and Maputo in Mozambique). Respondent-informed timelines suggest wars, economic policies and natural increase have led to natural resource-dependent populations in marginal, previously little-inhabited lowland coastal areas. Respondents (n = 91) in interviews and focus groups rank climate stressors (temperature rise/erratic rain) highest amongst human/natural stressors having negative impacts on livelihoods and wellbeing (e.g., cross-scale cost of living increases including food and fuel prices). Sources of stress and impacts were mixed in time and space, complicating objective identification of causal chains. Some appeared to be specific to coastal areas. Respondents reported farms failing and rising dependence on stressed marine resources, food and fuel prices and related dependence on traders and credit shrunk by negative global market trends. Development in the guise of tourism and conservation projects limited access to land–sea livelihoods and resources in rural–urban areas (coastal squeeze). Mental modelling clarified resource user perceptions of complex linkages from local to international levels. We underline risks of the poor in marginal coastal areas facing double or multiple exposures to multiple stressors, with climate variability suggesting the risks of climate change.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge funding granted by the United Kingdom’s Leverhulme Trust for our project entitled Resilience of coastal communities to climate change in East Africa (2006–2009). We thank Jacquie de Chazal for assistance in preparatory research, and our government and NGO collaborators for fieldwork in Mozambique (Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustentavel para as Zonas Costeiras, MICOA) and Tanzania (Forum for the Conservation of Nature, and Mnazi Bay-Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Development UEA, and, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Matthew Bunce, Sergio Rosendo & Katrina Brown

  2. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Matthew Bunce & Katrina Brown

  3. e-GEO Centre for Geography and Regional Planning Studies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sergio Rosendo

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  1. Matthew Bunce
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Correspondence to Matthew Bunce.

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Appendix

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Table 8 Community timelines of events/changes in Mozambique (Macaneta; Bairro dos Pescadores) and Tanzania (Msamgamkuu; Msimbati)
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Bunce, M., Rosendo, S. & Brown, K. Perceptions of climate change, multiple stressors and livelihoods on marginal African coasts. Environ Dev Sustain 12, 407–440 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-009-9203-6

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