The RESILIM Program of USAID Southern Africa seeks to enhance the resilience of people and ecosystems in the Limpopo River Basin (LRB) by strengthening the capacity of the Limpopo Watercourse Commission (LIMCOM) and its key stakeholders to address issues of climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation in the context of trans-boundary integrated water resources management (IWRM). Climate change can reduce the resilience of people living in the basin, particularly where natural resource dependencies for development are high.

In this conceptual assessment ‘nexus thinking’ was used to examine the different drivers operating in the Limpopo River basin (LRB) system and propose alternative pathways to increasing sustainability. The context, however, is that resolving the drivers of vulnerability requires interventions that are system-wide and not necessarily at the places where they converge, which are hotspots of vulnerability. The assessment focuses on the interrelatedness of water resources, biodiversity and climate change and includes livelihoods (related to land-use), governance and population growth in the interlinked system.