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are more likely to increase overall livelihood security and wellbeing (Andersson
and Gabrielsson 2012).
Women across the LVB who today have few resources to reciprocate beyond
their labour power, especially female-headed households and/or those with
many dependents, are finding themselves increasingly excluded from the
reciprocal system, and must fend for themselves, with dire consequences.
Widows are among those to suffer most from this exclusion, since they tend
to be burdened already with many dependents to support but with weakened
widow rights and security (Gabrielsson and Ramasar 2012). With limited options
available to them, many women are thus increasingly involving themselves in
exchanges that transcend the boundaries of the extended family. But this search
for new support is associated with a higher degree of moral hazard, such as
seeking incomes from prostitution and risking HIV infection (Fenio 2009).
Paradoxically, the economy of affection that in the past was largely beneficial
for rural livelihoods has today - because of outside socio-economic policies and
global environmental changes, in combination with persistent gender inequality
- become one of the underlying causes of why so many rural farmers in the
LVB lack the adaptive capacities needed to reduce their vulnerability to climate
variability and change.
Addressing the causes of vulnerability by improving women's
adaptive capacities
Africa is considered the region where the 'adaptation deficit' (Osbahr 2007), i.e.
the lack of explicit integration of livelihood adaptation to climate change and
broader development issues, is most evident (Tschakert and Dietrich 2010). For
that reason, it is of urgent importance to understand the constraints that the
current gender regime and the narrowing of the economy of affection play in
impeding people's capacities to pursue adaptation, if climate vulnerability on the
continent is to be reduced.
In the LVB, considerable emphasis has been put on finding technological
or economic tools and strategies to reduce climate impacts - as by optimizing
planting with the use of mobile phones for seasonal forecasting, developing
drought and flood-resistant seed varieties, or studying the economic mechanisms
linked to carbon storage in soils and trees to mitigate carbon emissions
(Gabrielsson 2012). This has often come at the expense of understanding how
adaptive capacities may be improved among those who will use such tools and
technologies. Certainly, all these activities and measures are important parts of
the adaptation portfolio available to rural farmers in the LVB, but none of these
strategies can succeed without a deeper understanding of the social context in
which these strategies ultimately may be put to use.
This study of the LVB found signs of deliberate transformations taking place.
These are indeed embedded in a social context, and they build on principles
inherent in the economy of affection. Through collective efforts, widows in a
 
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