The stated focus of this special issue in the Climate and Development series ‘is on adaptation to climate change in Southern Africa in relation to [the] region's overall development prospects.’ The book fails to keep to this focus, presumably because of the elusive nature of the spatial impact predictability of climate change models, on the one hand, and the difficulty of linking such undefined impact to the region's overall development prospects, about which the book has little to say, on the other. Thus, the book, with a misleading cover photo, is a polemical attempt to assert ‘why’ national governments should act but offers little on ‘what’ should they act upon and even less so on ‘how’.

The Guest Editors admit that climate change impact ‘projections mostly depend on uncertain assumptions regarding future precipitation patterns, which are notoriously difficult to model.’ To this, I would add that none of the climate change models in their predictions consider the positive impact conservation agriculture or no-till farming systems (now practiced on some 8% of global cropland and increasing) can have on adaptation to climate change regardless of any specific predictions on precipitation patterns, not to mention its impact on mitigating climate change through additional carbon capture and sequestration and significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The concluding article calls for, without adequately reflecting on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into development policy and donors’ development strategies; learning from best practices as experienced by the OECD countries and the EU; and increasing funding from the industrialized world. The institutional and personal book prices set at US$640 and US$199 respectively seem unreasonably high.