Environmental Uncertainties and Livelihood Thresholds in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

这项研究将结合联合收割机从社会和自然科学的见解，了解如何在时间和空间的变化和不确定性影响人类与环境的相互作用。该项目将审查社会对环境变化，特别是降水和洪水的反应。令人感兴趣的是人们如何维持生计，以及这些战略如何在预期和应对环境变化时发生变化。因此，这项工作还将描述降水和洪水的模式及其对家庭农业、家庭收集芦苇、草和木材等材料以及个人进入旅游部门的影响。这项工作将定位在国际条约认可的重要湿地，博茨瓦纳的奥卡万戈三角洲（OD）。OD位于卡拉哈里（Kgaligadi）沙漠，每年因安哥拉高原降水而被洪水淹没，在过去几十年中，OD经历了降水和洪水的巨大变化。这一农村地区的人口高度依赖自然资源基础，无论是直接（例如，农业、芦苇采集）或间接（例如，以野生动物为导向的生态旅游业）。因此，进一步假设，这些波动增加了人们对水的可用性和洪水的时间/规模的不确定性，影响他们决定采用哪些和多少生计策略。项目的总体研究目标如下：1）量化OD人类-环境系统中的环境变化，特别是降水和洪水; 2）利用实地收集的和卫星获得的数据，捕捉自然资源在空间和时间上的分布; 3）绘制资源活动区和管理/保有权系统的地图，以更好地了解生计决策; 4）评估环境变化如何影响生计战略选择，以及这些决策如何影响环境;以及5）评估人类-环境系统框架在理解动态系统（如OD）方面的效用。尽管奥卡万戈三角洲在国际上备受瞩目，在人类对环境变化的感知和反应的不确定性对生计战略选择的影响方面，这一问题的研究不足。这项工作将对地方和区域资源管理人员产生实际和直接的效益。与当地研究人员的合作将有助于向从学前班到大学的地区学生传播所吸取的经验教训。博茨瓦纳大学当地校区的学生以及抽样社区的成员将接受调查和全球定位系统（GPS）收集方面的培训，这些技能将有助于个人和社区的能力建设。博茨瓦纳政府保存了经联合国批准的研究成果，供相关政府机构使用，从而促进了根据环境变化进行更好的资源管理。此外，研究结果将通过《拉姆萨尔湿地公约》的科学和技术审查小组分发。技术报告已分发给《公约》的所有签署国，并将有助于向国际受众提供研究结果。

This research will combine insights from both social and natural sciences to understand how variability and uncertainty in time and space impact human-environment interactions. The project will examine social responses to environmental variability, particularly precipitation and flooding. Of interest is how people maintain their livelihoods, and further how these strategies change in anticipation and in response to environmental change. Thus this work will also characterize the patterns of precipitation and flooding as well as their impacts on household farming, household collection of materials such as reeds, grasses, and wood, and individual entry into the tourism sector. The work will be positioned in the international treaty-recognized Wetland of Importance, the Okavango Delta (OD) of Botswana. Nestled within the Kalahari (Kgaligadi) Desert and flooded each year from Angolan highland precipitation, the OD has experienced vastly dramatic changes in precipitation and flooding in the last several decades. This rural area's population is highly dependent on the natural resource base, either directly (e.g., farming, reed collection) or indirectly (e.g., the wildlife-oriented ecotourism industry). It is therefore further hypothesized that these fluctuations have increased people's uncertainty about the availability of water and the timing / magnitude of flooding, impacting their decisions about which and how many livelihood strategies to employ. The overall project research goals are as follows: 1) quantify environmental change in the OD human-environment system, with particular respect to precipitation and flooding; 2) capture the distribution of natural resources over space and time using field-collected and satellite-derived data; 3) map resource activity areas and management / tenure systems to better understand livelihood decision-making; 4) assess how environmental change impacts livelihood strategy selection, and, in turn, how these decisions impact the environment; and 5) evaluate the utility of a human-environment system framework for understanding dynamic systems such as the OD.Despite the Okavango Delta's high profile internationally, it has been understudied in terms of the impacts of uncertainty in human perception of and reaction to environmental change in livelihood strategy selection. This work will be of practical and immediate benefit to local and regional resource managers. Collaboration with local researchers will facilitate diffusion of lessons learned to area students, from preschool to university-level. Students from the local University of Botswana campus as well as members of the sampled communities will be trained in survey and GPS (global positioning system) collection, marketable skills which will build capacity for both individuals and communities. The Botswana government maintains permit-approved research results for access by relevant government agencies, thus facilitating better resource management in light of environmental change. Further, results will be distributed through the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands through its Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP). Technical Reports are disseminated to all signatory countries to the Convention and will assist in making the research findings available to an international audience.