guest column:Peter Makwanya IN the framework of climate action and recovery strategies, more often stakeholders have become accustomed to the phrase community resilience. While this is correct in every respect, it is clear that households make up a community. For this reason, the micro-significance of the household element continues to be overshadowed, thereby, creating information, procedural and knowledge gaps. An analysis of a household, as the first pot of call and step towards the building of a broad network of communities, should be holistic. A household is viewed, in terms of its location, occupants or headship including its assets as well as its potential to adapt, absorb climate shocks or its failure to perform both functions. Topical and critical things in a household are its infrastructure and assets. The assets normally include livestock, crops, income, education, knowledge, information and technology. When interrogating issues of household resilience, the mostly articulated phrase is rural household resilience as if there are no urban resilience issues to talk about. Normally experts in the development sector continue making reference to the rural household because that is where poverty is assumed to be rampant, but there is also stinking poverty in the urban areas. Inasmuch as rural households are failing to cope with climate shocks, a number of urban households are in the same predicament. For a household to increase its resilience and withstand climate shocks, a stock take should be undertaken both inside and outside, including the supportive environment, whether they are conducive or not. Implementing partners like NGOs, government agencies and stakeholders should be in the mix as well. While it is generally assumed that female or youth-headed households lack resilience capacities and potential, some male-headed households are given the placement they do not deserve as they also lack household essentials. A typical household with all essentials should be in a position to grow crops that have the potential to generate income. These are what can be referred to as cash crops like maize, sunflowers, cereals, groundnuts, sorghum and cotton, among others. A typical household should also be able to diversify the growing of crops and extend to market or nutritional gardens. Adopting improved seed varieties is also essential for sustainable livelihoods diversification. With good agricultural productivity, households can generate income, improve food security and achieve resilience by managing hunger and even survive droughts. For every household, keeping livestock is the cornerstone of human survival and security, especially cattle although small-livestock like goats, sheep, rabbits, poultry and pigs, among others are equally important. Livestock can generate income in big and empowering ways. This enables households to respond to climate shocks. Energy is a critical component. The type of energy used determines the household’s coping capacity. Some households use electricity, while others use solar energy, c