Drought Hazard and Land Management in the Drylands of Southern Africa

Abstract

Significant climatic variability is a common phenomenon in southern Africa. Frequent and persistent dry periods, unpredictable and variable rainfall and temperatures are considered normal climatic conditions. Additionally predictions of long-term climate changes for the sub-region suggest that by 2050 temperatures will be significantly higher and rainfall greatly reduced over extensive areas of southern Africa. Innovative drought hazard and land management responses are being implemented in the southern Africa sub-region. Best practices and clear shortcomings that have been identified and lessons learnt can feed into future response development. The adaptive response capacities of farmers, pastoralists and natural resource managers for example have to be strengthened in anticipation of worsening climatic conditions for crops and livestock productivity, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and land management, as a matter of priority. Concurrently capacities at the regional and national decision-making levels need also to be addressed.

Case examples from the sub-region demonstrate that intensive support to individual farmers and communities can significantly improve land management practices, responsiveness to climatic variability and improve livelihood security. Furthermore, it is clear however that pilot approaches need to be “up-scaleable”. Pilot studies may not be success stories if lessons learnt are not integrated in a wider systems context. It is also clear that local level interventions on their own will do little to address the issues of land degradation, desertification, sustainable land management, and drought hazard in an integrated way that reaches across to the regional and national decision making levels.

The cases selected provide examples of (i) an early warning system (EWS), and (ii) drought and/or desertification policy. These examples are being analysed based on experiences from southern Africa. Short narrative descriptions are provided and salient lessons learnt synthesised.