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| Report on the Status of Drought Preparedness & Mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa - Volume 1, Synthesis |
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| Author: |
UNDP / BDP, 2000-01
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| Title: |
Report on the Status of Drought Preparedness & Mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa - Volume 1, Synthesis |
| Publisher: |
UNDP / Drylands Development Centre, 78 pages
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| Type: |
Reports
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| Country / Region: |
Africa
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| Categories: |
Agriculture,
Land,
Desertification
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| Themes/Issues: |
Land Degradation
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| Date Posted: |
2005-03-21 |
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The first of a three-volume publication, this report provides a broad summary of a comprehensive assessment of the status of Drought Preparedness and Mitigation (DPM) in sub-Saharan Africa prone to drought, undertaken in order to better define the priority areas for further UNDP support for drought mitigation. A second and third volume deal with country reports for West and Southern Africa respectively.
The inventory is intended to create awareness raising among decision-makers, technicians, and field staff of the importance of DPM. This awareness will in turn improve participation in and ownership of DPM programmes.
The assessment consisted of a desk review of the status of DPM based on published reports, interviews with key government and regional entities, donors, NGOs, founded on a working knowledge of respective countries.
Drought is a perennial feature in many countries of Africa, spurring global efforts to develop more effective response strategies that emphasis preparedness and mitigation. For example, Agenda 21 contains a programme for developing comprehensive drought preparedness and drought-relief schemes, including self-help arrangements, for drought-prone areas and designing programmes to cope with environmental refugees. The United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD) also refers to the need for affected countries to develop more effective measures to mitigate the effects of drought.
UNDP has developed a programme aimed at strengthening the capacity of affected African countries to respond pro-actively to drought, in the context of the National Action Programmme (NAP) process. This support emphasizes three interlinked components:
1. Design of national drought policy frameworks, which spell out the range of policy measures, that the government will put in place to deal with recurrent droughts.
2. Elaboration of operational guidelines that translate the policy framework into concrete actions and measures, which clarify the roles and responsibilities of government entities, civil society, donors, and other parties in the event of drought. These measures should facilitate the allocation of resources to support actions.
3. Strengthening early warning systems and re-focussing them to reinforce contingency planning and mitigation strategies.
4. Integrating bio-physical data with socio-economic indicators on coping mechanisms and livelihood systems to support monitoring efforts.
Significant efforts have been made by many countries to mitigate the effects of drought, particularly in setting up early warning systems at both national and sub-regional levels. Nevertheless, the availability of early warning information has not always led to early action. A recurring problem has been the "stop and go" attitude adopted by some governments to drought planning, exemplified by the fact that national efforts to mitigate the effects of drought often
fall by the wayside once the rains return. The lack of active involvement of affected local populations in planning response strategies result in their treatment as helpless victims needing assistance. Thus, strategies to mitigate the effects of drought often ignore what local people do to help themselves in times of drought, with the unintended effect of undermining local coping strategies and mechanisms and weakening local institutional capacity. The situation is perpetuated by policies at national level that favour food aid over proactive contingency planning, ignoring the need to build effective mitigation and response strategies at subnational
levels. As a consequence, planning for drought is frequently centralized at the national level, and early warning systems are largely designed to serve as tools for food aid planning as opposed to active contingency planning.
This review included an assessment of existing policies and strategies for drought preparedness and mitigation, and linkage with overall national development planning processes and other sectoral policies (e.g. food security, poverty eradication, natural resources management, particularly water). In addition:
- Review of institutional mechanisms at regional, national,and sub-national levels to respond to the effects of drought, including an assessment of existing contingency planning processes/mechanisms, and institutional mechanisms (i.e. regional and local) level;
- Documenting existing early warning systems, including assessment of the capacity for climate analysis and making long-range forecasts;
- Assessment of existing links to monitor and analyse environmental changes and the socio-economic implications;
- Inventory of the actions of the key players in DPM, including bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, sub-regional organizations, etc., and the identification of gaps in research for potential follow-up.
The following regions and countries were targeted:
West Africa: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Cape Verde, Senegal, Chad and Ghana.
- East Africa: Regional overview only.
- Southern Africa: Angola, Swaziland, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
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