Browsing by Subject "drought"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Open Access
    “It is what it is”: an ethnography of women's experience of drought in Madziva, Zimbabwe
    (2020) Kanengoni, Mistancia; Solomon, Nikiwe
    Bad weather conditions such as drought have had detrimental effects on the agrarian life of the people in Madziva rural area, Zimbabwe. Due to the unfavorable weather conditions in this area, poverty and unemployment, most men migrated and continue to migrate to the urban areas in search of greener pastures. This research focuses on how these more frequent extreme weather conditions in Madziva, resulting in less predictable seasons, have increased incidences of precarity. This is important as it portrays how the climate has changed, its effect and the anxiety and expectations around it. Furthermore, providing perception of the nature of climate change in the village is important in order to assess the evidence of nature and level of climate change (manifesting through drought). As a result of the uncertainty caused by drought, the migration of men had been rampant in Madziva, and thus the village is characterized by a significant number of female-led households. To understand the social, political and economic dynamics of what it means to survive in a time of drought for ‘fragmented' families, an ethnographic research was conducted in Madziva over two months (14 June 2017 to 15 July 2017) and (10 December 2017 to 11 January 2018) during one of the worst droughts in Zimbabwe. This research follows the everyday lives of eight women and the interactions with 15 more women through focus group interviews in order to understand the strategies used to achieve survival. In this thesis, the results of an ethnography of women's experience of drought particularly in Madziva rural area in Zimbabwe between June 2017 and mid-January to mid-February 2018 are presented. It further explores, the locals' understandings of extreme weather conditions particularly in Madziva rural area and how practices, particularly those linked to gender, are shaped or reinforced. This research found out that the people of Madziva rural area, particularly women are severely affected by drought as compared to men. This is because of the expectations of managing the household and caring for children which requires them to be heavily reliant on natural resources. The reliance on natural resources has been due to the very poor and non-performing Zimbabwean economy, however, these are the resources which become scarce in a time of drought, which exacerbates precarity. Additionally, women in rural areas such as Madziva have less access to critical information on shifts in cropping patterns and weather alerts, and this can be linked to the gendered structure of the village, where men are seen as the principle holders of knowledge of the land. Furthermore, women also have very little power in decision making and access to resources because of the land ownership titles often given to the men of the household. However, with iv the high migration to urban centers, there is a gap that the women of Madziva must navigate and this thesis aims to explore how this occurs. For instance, during the fieldwork, it became evident that irrespective of all these challenges that are caused by drought, women are always expected to make a plan to provide for their families although there is a stiff competition for the remaining natural resources. Women in Madziva negotiated relationships of marginality, responsibility, togetherness and belonging through the ways they experienced the challenges ushered by drought.
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    Open Access
    Karoo farmers living and working experiences in protracted drought conditions: a case study
    (2021) Reynolds, Megann; Goodman, Suki; Conradie, Beatrice
    In the South African context, a geographical region prone to the occurrence of frequent and intense periods of drought, the emergence of climate conditions reaching new extremes raises concerns of adaptability to sustain living and work well-being in such circumstances. The realisation of economic, social, environmental and psychological impacts resultant from drought conditions is particularly relevant to farmers, an occupation group who are often characterised by socio-economic vulnerability in South Africa. Consequently, this research seeks to explore the yet undocumented experiences of farmers living and working in the current drought conditions, located in the Karoo region of South Africa. A further aim of this research is to explore how these experiences have affected farmers' psychological well-being, as well as understanding the coping mechanisms they have used to deal with this long-standing crisis situation. The present study adopted an exploratory case study design using an interpretivist paradigmatic stance. Based on research conducted and reviewed within the climate change domain, it was understood that farmers' experiences of working in drought conditions were complex, context specific and differed amongst individuals. Therefore, knowledge was viewed as subjective as there was no particular, correct path to knowledge as it emerged through various contexts. The case under study was Karoo farmers in the Western Cape province. Their living and working experiences, and coping mechanisms were specific to their surrounding landscapes and chosen type of farming. Furthermore, this case study was particularly concerned with farmers who retained close living, working and cultural relationships to their natural environments. Consequently, the unit of analysis in this study was the individual. A purposive sampling strategy was adopted and a total of eight participants were interviewed. An inductive approach to analysing the data was undertaken, using Braun and Clarke's (2006) Thematic Analysis. Three major themes emerged during the analysis with a number of associated sub-themes. The results describe the sample's shared ecological grief experiences due to both implicit and explicit impacts resultant from sustained drought conditions. The negative psychological outcomes the sample endured as a result of these experiences, demonstrates the implication of living and working in such conditions for work and psychological well-being. The common coping mechanisms employed over this time are also extracted from the themes. The discussion presents the findings of this study through the lens of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach framework, to understand how drought conditions presents barriers to these farmers sustaining their well-being.
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    Potential impacts of climate change and land-use change on hydrological drought in the Western Cape (South Africa)
    (2022) Naik, Myra; Abiodun, Babatunde
    The Western Cape (South Africa) recently witnessed the most severe drought on record. The meteorological drought, which was characterised by below-normal rainfall for three consecutive years (2015 – 2017), cascaded to agricultural and then hydrological drought, resulting in devastating socio-economic consequences. While some studies indicate that climate change may increase the severity and frequency of droughts in the Western Cape in the future, there is a lack of information on how to mitigate the effects of future climate change on hydrological drought. This dissertation therefore investigated the extent to which land-use changes could be applied to reduce climate change impacts on future hydrological drought in this region. For the study, the revised Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT+) was calibrated and evaluated over four river basins in the Western Cape, and the climate simulation dataset from the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) was bias-corrected. Using the bias-corrected climate data as a forcing, the SWAT+ was used to project the impacts of future climate change on water yield and hydrological drought in the four basins and to quantify the sensitivity of the projection to four feasible land-use change scenarios in these basins. The relevant land-use scenarios are the expansion of mixed forests (FrLand), the restoration of grassland (GrLand), the restoration of shrubland (SrLand), and the expansion of cropland (CrLand). The model evaluation shows good agreement between the simulated and observed monthly streamflow at hydrological stations, and the bias correction of the CORDEX datasets improved the quality of the SWAT+ hydrological simulations in the four basins. The climate change projection depicts an increase in temperature and potential evapotranspiration but a decrease in precipitation and all the hydrological variables. Drying is projected across the Western Cape, and the magnitude of such drying increases with higher global warming levels (GWLs). The land-use changes alter the impacts of climate change by influencing the hydrological balance. While FrLand mitigates the impacts of climate change on the frequency of hydrological drought by increasing streamflow, soil water and percolation, CrLand mitigates the impacts by increasing surface runoff. However, the magnitudes of these land-use change impacts are very small compared to the climate change impacts. Hence, the results suggest that land-use changes may not be an efficient strategy for mitigating the climate change impacts on hydrological drought over the region. The findings obtained from this 2 research provide relevant information towards mitigating the severity of future droughts and improving water security in Western Cape River Basins.
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    Understanding the characteristics of droughts over Eastern Africa in past and future climates
    (2020) Nguvava, Mariam Melikizedek; Abiodun, Babatunde J
    Drought poses a threat to socio-economic activities across eastern Africa and its river basins. While there are indications that global warming may continue to enhance evaporation and intensify droughts at all scales, most drought projections over eastern Africa are based on rainfall alone and are limited to meteorological droughts. The present study combines rainfall and Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) to examine the characteristics of meteorological and hydrological droughts in present and future climates at the regional and river basin scales. To accomplish that we have applied five objectives; i) Study the temporal and spatial characteristics of eastern Africa droughts modes, ii) Investigate how some atmospheric teleconnections influence the characteristics of the Africa droughts modes, iii) Examine the influence of 1.5°C and 2°C global warming levels on drought modes in eastern Africa under two future climate scenarios, RCP 4.5 and RCP8.5 iv) Assess how increases in global warming will influence drought characteristics over eastern African river basins. v) Examine the potential impacts of climate change and land use change on water availability in the Rufiji River basin (RRB), Tanzania, with an emphasis of hydrological droughts in this basin. Different types of datasets, including gridded and station observation datasets, regional climate model simulations (CORDEX: Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) and hydrological simulations (SWAT: Soil and Water Assessment Tool), were analysed for the study. The meteorological drought were characterised using two indices (i.e. Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, SPEI; Standardized Precipitation Index, SPI) at 3- and 12-month scales, while the hydrological droughts were characterised using four indices (i.e. soil water index, SWI; Surface Runoff Index, RFI; Water Yield Index, WYI; and Stream Flow index, SFI). The study combined principal component analysis (PCA) with wavelet analysis to identify the spatio-temporal structure of four dominant drought modes over the region. It also used wavelet coherence to quantify the influence of four atmospheric teleconnections (i.e. El Niño Southern Oscillation, ENSO; Indian Ocean Dipole, IOD; Tropical Atlantic Dipole Index, TADI; and Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, QBO) on the drought modes. The study also projects the characteristics of future droughts over eastern Africa and its major river basins at different global warming levels (GWLs). Series of hydrological simulations were used to assess the sensitivity of future droughts to four land use change scenarios (i.e. increase in forestry, shrubs, cropland and agriculture) over the Rufiji River Basin (RRB), a prominent river basin in eastern Africa. Although eastern Africa have been documented with several drought studies, the application of a combination of PCA, Wavelet analysis, wavelet coherence and Self Organizing Maps provides more comprehensive representation of droughts in the region using SPEI/SPI derived from both models and observations The results of the study show that the four drought modes, which have their core areas over different parts of eastern Africa, account for more than 45% of drought variability in the region. All the drought modes are strongly coupled with either ENSO or IOD indices (or both); but, in addition, one of the modes is also strongly coupled with the TADI. CORDEX models give a realistic simulation of the relevant climate variables for calculating drought indices over eastern Africa and the river basins. However, the ensemble mean struggles to reproduce the spatial distribution and frequency of drought intensity in the region. The CORDEX simulations project no changes in the spatial structure of the drought modes but suggest an increase in SPEI drought intensity and frequency over the hotspots of the drought modes and elsewhere in the region. The magnitude of the increase, which varies over the drought mode hotspots, increases with increasing GWLs. The projections also show that the increase in intensity and frequency of drought can be attributed more to increased PET than to reduced precipitation. In contrast to the SPEI projection, the SPI projection shows a weak change in intensity and frequency of droughts, and the magnitude of the increase does not vary with the GWLs. Over the river basins, the SPEI projections are more robust than the SPI projections. Over the RRB, the future projections of some hydrological drought indices (i.e. RFI and SFI) follow the change in the SPEI projections, while others (i.e. SWI and WYI) follow that of SPI. Among the four land use scenarios considered, only forestry and shrubs show a substantial change in the hydrological drought indices. The results of the study thus give valuable insight into the characteristics of future droughts in eastern Africa and provide a useful guide to the effectiveness of using land cover to reduce the severity of hydrological droughts over river basins in the region. However, resolution of CORDEX dataset (50km, i.e. 0.44deg) could be among the potential limitation as it is too low to capture the influence of local-scale processes (e.g. sea breeze, mountain induced circulations) on drought over the region.