Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-8 (section)

===== 8.4.5.1.1 Proactive and reactive livelihood shifts and their relevance for future risks due to climate change =====

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Livelihood shifts may also take place proactively as new opportunities emerge and reduce climate impacts by providing buffers of financial capital. For example, [[#Hirons--2014|Hirons (2014)]] assesses artisanal and small-scale mining as an emerging livelihood opportunity in Ghana. Evidence challenges the popular assertion around the idea of wealth seeking for short-term profit and reveals an alternative scenario whereby artisanal and small-scale mining can be a poverty-driven activity, particularly in areas in which agricultural employment has not delivered sufficient income or where crops are highly exposed and sensitive to climate change impacts. Income from new livelihood activities can support recovery following specific events (major flooding or drought) linked to climate hazards and climate change. Livelihood shifts therefore take place in a highly dynamic and heterogeneous context. Another example comes from the Small Lake Chad, Republic of Chad studied by ( [[#Okpara--2016a|Okpara et al., 2016a]] ). Fluctuating water levels linked to seasonal flood pulses and droughts were shown to link closely to livelihood dynamics. Lake drying led to new adaptive behaviours based on seasonality (e.g., migration of herders to different areas of the lake shore to access water resources, in line with more predictable seasonal changes), as well as linking to opportunism supported by climate change impacts. For example, during times of lake flooding, new opportunities for fishing opened for people that were otherwise operating primarily as pastoral or agricultural households. However, these kinds of livelihood shifts remain largely reactive and can bring negative as well as positive impacts. In the Lake Chad case, it resulted in social clashes between different groups, while in other examples from Tanzania, livelihood shifts towards extensification of farming led to deforestation ( [[#Suckall--2014|Suckall et al., 2014]] ), which could constitute a maladaptive shift. Such findings have important implications for the types of government and institutional support that can enable livelihood shifts and highlight the need to consider trade-offs for climate change mitigation, as well as with other adaptation options (see [[#8.6|Section 8.6]] ).

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