Lake Chilwa basin is an important water catchment that provides a livelihood to more than 117,031 farm families. The basin is endowed with a number of resources such as water, fish, birds and grass for thatching and constructing houses and boats, mats, fish traps, bird traps, and baskets. A variety of stakeholders use and manage the catchment with different, and sometimes conflicting, objectives. Due to an increase in the incidence of drought and erratic rainfall as a result of climate change, irrigation has been promoted and more land is being cleared to grow more rice and irrigated maize. This has increased soil erosion, causing siltation, and reduced the water flowing into the lake thereby reducing fish productivity. A multi-stakeholder analysis was conducted in the catchment to evaluate the economics of climate change adaptation. The results show that irrigation to increase rice and maize output is reducing the total benefits from the catchment. Qualitative ranking of costs and benefits by stakeholders show that irrigation imposes a huge cost on the environment, affecting the fishery and bird sectors. The ranking also shows that irrigation has had high levels of public investment but the benefits accrue to the private sector whereas the costs of soil and water conservation technologies, which have more environmental benefits, are privately borne. This study estimates that the loss in value due to the reduction in fish productivity is about US$ 1,003,580 per year. An additional US$ 249,460 a year is lost in irrigated land due to loss of soil fertility and siltation. To supplement their income after crop failure or reduction in fish catches, the communities in the catchment have increased bird hunting and doing craftwork with lake reeds. An increase in bird hunting is causing an estimated loss of US$ 59,238 a year from reductions in the bird population. Including soil and water conservation technologies in irrigation and rain-fed agriculture increases benefits all stakeholders. This helps improve the efficiency of the adaptation strategies being implemented in the other resource sectors – including closed seasons for fishing and bird hunting – and helps ensure they are sustainable. They would also yield an estimated additional US$ 8,473,433 a year worth of food crops on top of eliminating the losses to fisheries and bird resources. This shows how effective planning and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies in this catchment area needs thorough communication with all stakeholders.